Dominic Lieven graduated first in his year, 1973, at the University of Cambridge. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard and, on completing his PhD, became a lecturer in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics, where he is now Professor of Russian Government.

He has also been a visiting professor at Tokyo and Harvard universities, as well as a Humboldt Fellow in Gottingen and Munich. He has published widely, mostly on late imperial Russia, and his ancestors connect him to a surprising range of empires among them, his great-uncle, Prince Anatol Lieven, son of Alexander II's Lord Chamberlain.