Upon his graduation from the School of Asian and African Studies of Moscow State University, Sergey Volkov was admitted to the graduate school at the Institute of Oriental Studies. Following early completion and defense of his master’s thesis, he was offered a position in that institute (March, 1982). In December of 1989, he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation. From 1990, the author worked for a number of non-governmental organizations. In 2002-2010, he was the section chief in the research division of Russian State Library, and in 2015 became director for research at Biographical Studies Institute of Russian Endowment for Education and Science. Research interests include prosopography and comparative studies of social structure in different countries based on statistical data.