Marina Tolmacheva is Professor of History at Washington State University, President Emerita of the American University of Kuwait, and past Director of the WSU Asia Program. In 1998-2005 Tolmacheva served the WSU College of Liberal Arts as Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs. In 1998 she was Visiting Professor at the pre-eminent French academic center, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In 2003 Tolmacheva was awarded the Honorary Professorship (equivalent of honorary doctorate) by the Institute of Eastern Languages and Cultures of the National Pedagogical University of Kyrgyzstan. Twice a Fulbright Fellow (1994 to Kyrgyzstan, 2012 to Ukraine), she was also a Fellow of the Open Society Institute International Higher Education Support Program (2005-2006). Tolmacheva is a past Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in the Humanities (1992-93) and a recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Historical Association.

Tolmacheva received her undergraduate Degree with Distinction from St. Petersburg University and Ph.D. in History from the Russian Academy of Sciences. A specialist in medieval Arab history and Islamic civilization, she has authored and co-authored three books, contributed chapters to six more books and published over 50 articles and 90 book reviews in learned journals and encyclopedias. Her research explores the works of medieval Arab geographers and travelers, among them the famous Ibn Battuta. She has also published on Muslim women and on Islamic historiography of Africa and Central Asia.