Nadieszda Kizenko's first book, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People (Penn, 2000), won the Heldt Prize from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies. She has been awarded prestigious grants from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the International Research Exchange Program. Kizenko has worked in archives in Russia, Ukraine, Italy, Germany, and France. Kizenko lectures and publishes widely on religion in the Russian empire. She received her bachelor's and doctorate degrees in Russian history from Harvard and Columbia.