Mark R. Beissinger

 Professor of Politics

 Princeton University

Mark Beissinger is Professor of Politics at Princeton, and previously served on the faculties of University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard University.  His main fields of interest are nationalism, state-building, imperialism, and social movements, with special reference to the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states.  In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, he is author or editor of four books, including Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge University Press, 2002), which won the 2003 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award, presented by the American Political Science Association for the best book published in the United States in any field of government, politics, or international affairs, and the 2003 Mattei Dogan Award, presented by the Society for Comparative Research for the best book published in the field of comparative research.   Beissinger  received his B.A. from Duke University in 1976  and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1982.  From 1992-98 he was the founding Director of Wisconsin’s Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia , and from 2001-04 was Chair of Wisconsin’s Political Science Department.  He has served as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and as Vice-Chair of the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research.  His research has been supported by the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the Wissenshaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Science Foundation, the United States Institute for Peace, and the Ford, Rockefeller, and Olin Foundations.   He is working on a book tentatively entitled Imperial Reputation:  The Politics of Empire in a World of Nation-States. 

Curriculum vitae                   Research and writing