Professor Mark Galeotti is an expert on Russian organized crime, espionage, and similar murky topics. He is currently a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague, and also principal director of Mayak Intelligence, his boutique consultancy. Before that, he was Professor of Global Affairs and departmental chair at New York University, Senior Lecturer in International History at Keele University in the UK, a special adviser to the attached British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, and a visiting professor at Rutgers—Newark (USA), Charles University (Prague), and MGIMO (Moscow). He read history at Robinson College, Cambridge University and then took his doctorate in politics at the London School of Economics, after a brief time working in the City of London. A prolific writer, he has 15 authored and edited books to his name; his next, Vory: the story of the Russian mafia, is due out from Yale University Press in 2018. He tweets as @MarkGaleotti and also blogs at In Moscow’s Shadows.