Mark Sedgwick was born in England and studied history of Oxford University before emigrating to Egypt. He received his PhD at the University of Bergen in Norway, taught history at the American University in Cairo, and then moved to Denmark to teach in the Department of the Study of Religion at Aarhus University. He was secretary of the European Society of the Study of Western Esotericism; he first became aware of the connections between esotericism and radical politics while working on his PhD.