Merchant, Livingston: - Livingston Merchant graduated from Harvard College in 1963 in Slavic Studies. He holds doctorates from Harvard University in International Relations and Soviet Studies and from Brown University in Asian History. He has worked for thirty years as an educator in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and has spent nine years in Turkey, first as head of Robert College in Istanbul and then as Senior Lecturer at the Graduate School of Education of Bilkent University in Ankara. In the spring of 2012, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Raparin in Ranya, in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. He lives in Maastricht, the Netherlands and is engaged in literary studies and writing fiction.