Prof. Hans-Georg HEINRICH

Completed studies in law, political science, and foreign languages. Lecturer at Vienna-based teaching centers affiliated with U.S. universities. Held a chair of political science at the University of Vienna. Visiting professorships and guest lectures in various countries (Russia, Hungary, Poland, Iraq, Egypt, Cambodia). Worked in various field missions and presences of the international organization OSCE (Tbilisi, Chechnya, Belgrade). Co-founder of ICEUR-Vienna and currently its Vice President. Publications on Soviet, Russian, and East European politics in various languages.

Dr. Taras Kuzio, professor, Department of Political Science, National University Kyiv Mohyla Academy; Associate Fellow am Forum for Foreign Relations

Dr. Vladislav Inozemtsev, Director, Center for Post-Industrial Studies (Moscow, Russia) Special Advisor to MEMRI's Russia Media Studies Project (Washington, DC)

CertTransl (Leipzig), AM (Stanford), MPhil (Oxford), DipPolSci, DrPhil (FU Berlin), PhD (Cambridge). Fellow or lectureships at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, Harvard University, St. Antony’s College Oxford, Urals State University in Yekaterinburg, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kyiv, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and Institute of International Relations in Prague. Since 2020, Analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, and Associate Professor of Political Science at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. General editor of the book series Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Ukrainian Voices. Member of the boards of the International Association for Comparative Fascist Studies, Boris Nemtsov Centre for the Academic Study of Russia at Charles University of Prague, book series Explorations of the Far Right, Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies, Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, World Affairs journal, Forum noveishei vostochnoevropeiskoi istorii i kul’tury, and The Ideology and Politics Journal.

Dr. Anatol Lieven is Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC. He was a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar from 2014 to 2021. He holds a BA and PhD from Cambridge University in England. His latest book, Climate Change and the Nation State, was published in paperback in 2021 by Penguin (UK) Oxford University Press. From 1986 to 1998, Anatol Lieven worked as a British journalist in South Asia, Afghanistan, the former Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe, and is author of several books on these regions, including Pakistan: A Hard Country and Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry. His book The Baltic Revolutions: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence won the Orwell Prize for political writing and the Oxford University Press Governor’s Award. America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (updated second edition 2012) delineated the main dividing lines in US politics and political culture concerning national identity and foreign policy. He writes frequently for the media, and his articles have appeared in The Financial Times, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Time, and Newsweek. In March 2023, Anatol Lieven was seriously injured in an accident while researching in Ukraine.

Senior Research Fellow, Head of the Laboratory for the Analysis of Transformational Processes, New Eurasian Strategies Center (NEST).
A political expert with a background in Russian domestic politics whose 40-year career has spanned the worlds of academic research, politics, and business. Before moving to NEST, he was a visiting researcher at Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), Berlin, focused on Russian domestic politics and its impact on foreign policy, on political regime in Russia, elites, and decision making. He is also a consulting fellow at The Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), London.
He is the author or editor of numerous publications dealing with analysis of Russia’s political regime, post-Soviet transformation, socioeconomic and political development of Russia’s regions, democratization, federalism, and elections, among other topics. In 2019-2022 he was a senior research fellow at Russian and Eurasian programme, Chatham House, London. In 2013-2021 he was a professor and head at Laboratory for Regional Development Assessment Methods at Higher School of Economics, Moscow. For many years he was scholar in Residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, where he co-directed the Society and Regions project. He also heads the Center for Political-Geographic Research. Petrov is a member of the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS Eurasia), and a member of scientific boards of the Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies, ‘Russian Politics’ and ‘Russian Politics & Law’. During 1990–1995, he served as an advisor to the Russian parliament, government, and presidential administration.
His works include the three-volume 1997 Political Almanac of Russia and the annual supplements to it. He is the coauthor and editor of The Dynamics of Russian Politics: Putin’s Reform of Federal-Regional Relations in two volumes (2004, 2005), Irregular Triangle: Interrelations between Authorities, Business and Society in Russian Regions. Moscow: Vsya Rossiya, 2010 [in Russian], Russia in 2020: Scenarios for the Future (2011), and Russia 2025: Scenarios for the Russian Future. Palgrave Macmillan (2013), The State of Russia: What Comes Next (coedited with Maria Lipman). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Salzburg. Receiving his PhD from Michigan State University, he subsequently taught at the University of Pittsburgh from 1994 to 2009. Heinisch's research focuses on comparative politics, the radical right, populism as well as US-European relations. He is the author of over 40 peer-reviewed research articles and more than 50 other academic publications, including 14 books. His research has been published in the Journal of European Political Research, Political Studies, Journal of Common Market Studies, West European Politics, and many others. His books include Understanding Populist Party Organization (Palgrave 2016); The People and the Nation (Routledge 2019), and Politicizing Islam in Austria (Rutgers' University Press 2024). His research has been funded by grants by the European Union as well as the, the Austrian and Swiss Research Funds. He is the recipient of the National Science Award of the Austrian Parliament (2017), comments frequently on US and Austrian politics in international media, and lectures widely on US politics, most recently at the European Defense Academy in Brussels. He has been a regular visiting lecturer at Renmin University of China in Beijing since 2014.

MA BA Christoph BILBAN

Researcher and chief teaching officer at the Institute for Peacekeeping and Conflict Management responsible for conflicts in the former Soviet states.
Research work and lectures on conflicts in the post-Soviet space with a focus on the conflict in and around Ukraine, on Russian military theory, and on Russian foreign and security policy.

Senior Advisor, Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Editor-in-chief of Kennan Focus Ukraine, of the Ideology and Politics Journal, and of the Koinè Almanac
Professor, The Free University
His recent books:
From Servant to Leader. Chronicles of Ukraine under the Zelensky Presidency, 2019–2024
(Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag, forthcoming in 2025)
The Post-Soviet Human. Philosophical Reflections on Post-Soviet History

• in Ukrainian [Kyiv: Laurus — Milano: Kοινὴ, 2024];
• in Russian [Riga: School for Civic Education, 2024];
• in English [Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag, 2024]

Philosophy Unchained. Developments in Post-Soviet Philosophical Thought (ed. by M. Minakov)
(Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag, 2023)
Inventing Majorities. Ideological Creativity in Post-Soviet Societies (ed. by M. Minakov)
(Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag, 2022)

He is a Polish sociologist, political scientist and politician. Professor of the University of Warsaw, Chairman of the European School of Law and Administration rector of a private tertiary education institution in Warsaw. Member of the Polish United Workers Party, he supported the party's line in communist-era Poland. In post-communist Poland, member of the leftist parties (Democratic Left Alliance), deputy to Polish parliament (Sejm) from 1991 to 1997. Minister of National Education 1996–1997. Received the Commander's Cross with Star of the Polonia Restituta order in 1996.

Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs Deputy Head of Department II.3 – Russian Federation, Eastern Europe and South Caucasus, Eastern Partnership, Turkey and Central Asia Head of Department II.3b - Eastern Europe and South Caucasus

Dr. Elisabeth Schimpfössl is associate professor in Sociology at Aston University and visiting senior fellow at the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute. Her monograph Rich Russians: From Oligarchs to Bourgeoisie, published in 2018 by Oxford University Press, appeared in an updated version in Russian in October 2022 with Individuum Publishing. Her ongoing research into wealth inequality and wealth concentration is currently dealing with the West’s wartime policies toward Russian oligarch money as well as business and politics in the UK.

Dr. John Lough is a geopolitical expert with a background in Russia and Eastern Europe whose 35-year career has spanned the worlds of business, diplomacy, and research. He is an Associate Fellow of the Russia & Eurasia Programme at Chatham House (since 2009) and is a regular commentator on Russian and Ukrainian affairs. He spent three years with Highgate (2021-2024), a leading London-based strategy consulting firm, and was a partner in the company before moving to the New Eurasian Strategies Centre, a recently established think tank focused on the future of Russia. He ran his own consultancy business for five years advising clients on political and investment risk in Russia, Ukraine, and other countries of the former Soviet Union. From 2008 to 2016, he ran the Russia/CIS practice of BGR Gabara, a public affairs consultancy. From 2003 to 2008, he was an international affairs adviser at TNK-BP, Russia’s third-largest oil company at the time. He spent six years with NATO managing information programmes aimed at Central and Eastern Europe, including a posting to Moscow where he set up NATO’s Information Office in Russia. He was the first Alliance official to be permanently based in Russia (1995-1998). During this time, he developed media and public affairs programmes designed to contribute to better understanding of NATO and its policies in Russian society and was NATO’s spokesman in Russia. Before joining NATO, he was a senior lecturer at the Soviet Studies (later Conflict Studies) Research Centre in the UK, writing on a wide range of defence, security, and foreign policy issues related to the former Soviet Union. He studied German and Russian literature at Cambridge University. He is the author of Germany’s Russia Problem (Manchester University Press 2021).