Catriona Bass (Oxford) is a scholar of Tibetan and Russian history. She has taught at Hubei University in Wuhan and in the 1980s worked for the Lhasa City Government Education Department and the TAR Academy of Social Sciences.  She has addressed the European Parliament and the United Nations on educational development  in the TAR. She has published Inside the Treasure House: A Time in Tibet (Victor Gollancz, 1990) andEducation in Tibet : Policy and practice since 1950 (Zondervan, 1998). She is writing a biography of the city of St Petersburg.