Markku Kivinen
Markku Jalmari Kivinen (born June 5, 1951 in Helsinki, Finland) is a professor of sociology and the director of the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki, Finland, since 1996. Kivinen's academic expertise is social theory, Russian domestic and foreign policy, transition studies in comparative perspective, social inequality, power and democracy, cultural structures and macro processes. He has more than 300 publications on key sociological topics. He is director of the Finnish Graduate School for Russian and East European Studies, as well as many research projects funded by the Academy of Finland, EU and NordForsk. Since 2012  Kivinen is leading one of the Academy of Finland's Centres of Excellence (CoE) in Research, "Choices of Russian Modernisation". Markku Kivinen is series editor of "Studies of Contemporary Russia" (Routledge). Kivinen has also published novels in Finnish: "Betonijumalia" in 2009, translated into German ("Betongötter"), and "Lähetin loppupeli" in 2016. Markku Kivinen was awarded Honorary Doctor of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2011 and the City of Helsinki Research Prize in 2014.