Dr. Alison Ruth Kolosova studied Russian and French in the Department of Foreign Languages, Durham University, UK and then trained as a translator and interpreter at the University of Bath. Since 1996 she has lived in the Chuvash Republic, Russia where she has worked as a teacher, choir director and catechist in the Russian Orthodox Church. She studied Theology at the St Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, before continuing her doctoral studies at Durham University under Professor Fr Andrew Louth. Her PhD thesis focused on Nikolai Il`minskii and the influence of Russian Orthodox mission on the culture and national identity of the Turkic and Finno-Ugric peoples of the Mid-Volga region in the late 19th -early 20th centuries. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Ethnology at the Institute of Cultural Research, University of Tartu, Estonia. She co-chairs the Missiology Group of the International Orthodox Theological Association and is a member of the Europe Governing Board of the International Association for Mission Studies.