Petar Kehayov was born and raised in Sofia but obtained his bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees at the University of Tartu. In 2016, he habilitated at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he worked from 2020–2021 as an associate professor of Finno-Ugric studies and, since February 2023, he has been a professor of Finnic languages at the University of Tartu. He has published two monographs on Finnic languages, co-edited a volume on complementiser semantics in European languages, and co-authored a textbook on language and society for high schools. He has studied evidentiality, modality, and complex sentences in Finno-Ugric languages and beyond.