Simon Cosgrove lives in Somerset in the United Kingdom and is chair of the trustees of Rights in Russia and a former member of the board of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum. He is currently editor of the Rights in Russia website. Simon has many years’ experience working on grantmaking programmes supporting human rights organisations in Russia – first with the European Commission and then with the US-based MacArthur Foundation. He has also worked as a researcher for Amnesty International. Simon has a law degree and a PhD in Russian history and is the author of "Russian Nationalism and the Politics of Soviet Literature: the Case of Nash Sovremennik 1981-91" along with a number of articles and book reviews on Russian affairs. Earlier in his career Simon trained as a teacher and worked in secondary schools in London and rural Zimbabwe.