After graduating in Russian Language and Literature, I moved into the social sciences gaining an MSocSci and PhD in Russian and East European Studies all from the University of Birmingham, UK.  I continued to develop the focus of my thesis on drugs policy and prevention programmes in the Russian Federation as a Research Fellow in the Centre for Russian, Eurasian and European Studies (CREES), University of Birmingham. After working as a Research Fellow on a European Commission project in the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield, I joined LSHTM to work in the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies in 2005.