Educated at Robinson College, Cambridge (where I read history) and the London School of Economics (department of government), I was based at Keele 1991-2008, becoming head of the History department before moving to New York University in January 2009, where I am Clinical Professor in Global Affairs at the Center for Global Affairs of the NYU School of Professional Studies. I am currently (January-June 2016) a Visiting Fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations.

I have also spent time attached to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office as an adviser on Russian foreign and security policy (1996-97), visiting professor in public security at the School of Criminal Justice , Rutgers–Newark, USA (2005-6) and visiting fellow at Oxford University’s Extra-Legal Governance Institute (2007). While at Keele, I was also in my time director of both postgraduate and undergraduate studies, and also director of the Organised Russian & Eurasian Crime Research Unit (ORECRU), the only such specialized centre in Europe.

My most recent published works include the edited The Politics of Security in Modern Russia (Ashgate, 2011), Paths of Wickedness and Crime: the underworlds of the Renaissance Italian city (Gonfalone, 2012) and Spetsnaz: Russia’s special forces (Osprey, 2015).

I am now working on a number of projects, including a history of Russian organized crime (for Yale University Press). I also have a very long-term project, Criminal World, a monograph looking at the evolution of organised crime from the Mediterranean pirates and bandits of antiquity to today’s gangs.

Founding editor of the journal Global Crime (formerly Transnational Organized Crime ), was the European Editor of Low-Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement , I am also a member of the editorial boards of Crime & Justice International and The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies. I am a Contributing Editor for IntelliNews Business New Europe, for which I write ‘Stolypin,’ a monthly column on Russian politics.

I wrote a column, Siloviks & Scoundrels, for the Moscow News until the newspaper was closed, and now am a regular columnist for Vox, Russia! magazine and the Moscow Times.

I tweet on Russian and criminal affairs as @MarkGaleotti.

— Mark Galeotti