Born in Moscow, Irina Savelieva graduated Moscow State University in 1970. She earned a PhD in history degree in 1975 and Dr.habil. in history in 1990 (USSR Academy of Sciences). Since 1975 she made make her way up from junior to leading research fellow at the Institutes of the Russian Academy of Sci-ences. Since 2002 she is the Director of the Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities/State University – Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and since 2005 Ordinary professor, Chair of the history of ideas and historical methods, State University – Higher School of Economics, and since 2008 – Visiting professor, Uniwersytet Warszawski (Warsaw). In 1991-1994, Irina Savelieva was deputy chief editor of the journal “THESIS: Theory and History of Economic and Social Institutions and Systems”, the first academic journal in Russia which aim was to acquaint a Russian audience with the main tendencies in contemporary West
ern social sciences. The international scientific community provided eminent support for the almanac: its Editorial Council included leading Western and Russian specialists in the spheres of economics, sociology and history. In 1998-2002 she was coordinator of the “Translation project” and “University Library” programs at the Moscow branch of the Open Society Institute. The aim of these programs was to acquaint the Russian reader with the most significant works of classic and contemporary foreign scientific literature and to support publishers and translators of such books in Russia. Together the two programs provided trans-lation and publication of more than 400 fundamental Western research works in 11 social and humanity disciplines. In 2009 she with the co-author Andrei Poletayev was awarded with the All-Russian Prize (INOP Foundation) for the book Savelieva I. M., Poletayev A. V. Social Representations of the Past, or Do Americans Know History.(Social’nye predstavlenija o proshlom, ili Znajut li amerikantsy istoriju. M.: Novoe literatirnoe obozrenie, 2008). The main spheres of Savelieva professional interests are methodology of history sociology of knowledge, history of ideas, social history (19th-20th centuries), European and American historiography.