Iryna Gordeeva has a PhD in history (2000). She is a senior professor of Modern Russian History at the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH) in Moscow, having graduated from RSUH with a degree of Historian/Archivist (1997). She specializes in the sphere of the history of religious and grass-roots movements in Russia, including the history of utopianism, the communitarian movement, radical pacifism, the "Tolstoyan" movement, and Russian sectarianism.