Igor Zevelev  Igor Alexandrovich Zevelev (Russian: Игорь Александрович Зевелëв) is a Russian political scientist who has been a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center since 2020. Igor Zevelev was born in Tashkent, former USSR. In 1966, when he was ten years old, he moved to Moscow with his parents and sister. In 1978 he graduated from the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he majored in history and studied Burmese, Chinese, and English. Zevelev defended his Ph.D. in history at Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1982. In 1992, he defended his Doctor of Sciences degree (the highest academic rank in Russia) in political science at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow. Igor Zevelev has had an academic and research career intertwined with leadership positions in the fields of philanthropy and journalism. After graduating from Lomonosov Moscow State University's Institute of Asian and African Countries, Igor Zevelev embarked upon an academic career. From 1981 to 1988, he worked as a research fellow at Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. From 1988 to 1999, he served as Deputy Director and Head of Department at the Center for Developing Countries at the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO). In 1992, Igor Zevelev was invited as visiting professor to the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. This was the first of several visiting professorships in the United States. Throughout the 1990s, he taught at San Jose State University, at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Jackson School of International Studies of the University of Washington, and at Macalester College. Zevelev taught courses pertaining to Russian area studies and security studies, international relations, nationalism, human rights, great powers and comparative democracy. In 2000, Zevelev left the United States for a teaching position at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, where he worked as Professor of Russian Studies for five years. In 2005, Zevelev returned to Washington, DC to serve as Washington Bureau Chief for the RIA Novosti Russian News and Information Agency. In 2008, Igor Zevelev returned to Moscow from the United States and took up the position of Director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Russia office.