Christesen was born on 23 December 1911 in Blagoveshchensk, Russia[1] to Mikhail (Michael) Ivanovitch (6 Sep 1885–1967)[2][3] and Tatiana Siemenovna (c.1889–1979)[4] Maximoff.
[5] In 1917 she and her mother left Saint Petersburg to join her father, a captain in the merchant navy, in Harbin,[6] Manchuria where she began her secondary education.
[8][9] In February 1931 Christesen passed the Supplementary and Adult Matriculation Examination, giving her admission to the University of Queensland from which she later graduated, receiving a Dip.Ed in 1938.
[11] While teaching at the Institute of Modern Languages at Queensland University she met Clem Christesen who was taking lessons in German.
There was no established department, no staff, no suitable textbooks, no library (except my own), no secretarial support, and nobody to whom I could turn for advice on how best to structure the courses.
I could not persuade the Registrar to spend fifty pounds on a fount of Russian matrices owned by an aged priest in Sydney, so I bought it myself and taught compositors at a commercial printery how to set the type for our examination papers and texts.
[26] The book, Essays to Honour Nina Christesen, Founder of Russian Studies in Australia, edited by Judith Armstrong and Rae Slonek was published in 1979.