For more than 15 years, Elena Racheva worked as a special correspondent for the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, covering political and social events and topics related to Soviet history and collective memory.

Elena has published two books: Wolf’s Land (2018), a collection of longreads from remote Russian regions focusing on the disintegration of Russia’s social fabric and the inability of the remnants of the collapsed Soviet empire to protect its citizens; and Article 58: Uneliminated. Stories of People Who Survived What We All Fear Most (co-authored with Anna Artemieva), which features oral history interviews with former Soviet Gulag prisoners and perpetrators. The book was published in Russia (2016, 2018) and translated into Ukrainian, Polish, and French.

As a freelance author, Elena has contributed to several media outlets, including Vedomosti, Open Space, Colta, and openDemocracy. She also served as the executive editor of the Russian edition of The New York Times International Weekly (2009-2010) and was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2015-2016) in Washington, DC.

Elena holds a PhD from the University of Oxford and currently works there as a researcher in the Department of Sociology.