It is with great sadness that we learned of the sudden passing, on 2 May, of Elizabeth Teague. Despite her busy schedule, for many years now Elizabeth had selflessly found time to assist us with translations and support us with her deep knowledge of Russian politics and society. Since October 2016 she had been a member of our advisory council. Elizabeth as a person was unfailingly generous, gracious and kind. She also shared with us her love of the natural world, recently writing of her home in Oxford: “The butterflies are out and about and my favourite flower, the snakeshead fritillary, is in bloom in the Meadows.”
She will be sorely missed.
Our sincere condolences to Elizabeth’s family, friends and colleagues.
Simon Cosgrove
Chair of Trustees, Rights in Russia
Dr Elizabeth Teague OBE had a lifelong commitment to the study of Russian society and politics. A graduate of the University of Surrey, Elizabeth went on to complete a doctorate at the University of Birmingham, where she studied relations between workers and the state in Soviet Russia, spending a year in the USSR as a British Council student in the mid-1970s. She began her career as an analyst of Soviet affairs with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich in 1980. In the 1990s, she worked as an adviser to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities in The Hague, and as an analyst with the Jamestown Foundation. She also spent a year at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. From 1997 until 2012, she was a Research Analyst covering Russian domestic and foreign policy with the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office and worked for periods in the British Embassies in Moscow and Minsk. Elizabeth was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2012. Since 2013, she had convened the Russian and East European Studies Press Group for postgraduate students at the University of Oxford, where she was a Senior Member of St Antony’s College. She served as a member of the advisory board of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre. Since October 2016 she had been a member of the advisory council of Rights in Russia.
