Contributors

This blog will call on a wide range of Russia specialists for interviews, panels, articles on specific issues.  Their names will be added as they begin contributing.

Patrick Armstrong received a PhD from Kings College, University of London, England in 1976 and retired in 2008 after 30 years as an analyst for the Canadian government, specializing in first the USSR and then Russia. He was a Political Counselor in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow from 1993 to 1996. He has been a frequent speaker at the Wilton Park conferences in the UK.

Ned Cabaniss is is a retired U.S. Army colonel. For much of his 30-year career, he served as an intelligence officer, specializing in Soviet military and political issues, and is a fluent Russian linguist. He is a member of the Asheville Citizen-Times editorial advisory board and lives in Fairview, North Carolina.

William Dunkerley is a media business analyst and consultant based in New Britain, CT. He works extensively with media organizations in Russia and other post-communist countries, and has advised government leaders on strategies for building press freedom and a healthy media sector.

David Foglesong is a professor of history at Rutgers University and the author of The American Mission and the 'Evil Empire' (2007)

Paul Goode is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma, where he teaches Russian Politics and Russian Foreign Policy. He has published articles in Europe-Asia Studies, Post-Soviet Affairs, the Russian Analytical Digest, and is currently finishing a book manuscript on the demise of regionalism in Putin's Russia.

Eugene Ivanov is Innovation Program Manager at InnoCentive, a pioneer in the field of open innovation. He also writes blog The Ivanov Report. Eugene lives in Framingham, MA

Eric Kraus, now serving as Special Advisor for Global Strategy to Otkritie Investment Corporation, a Russian brokerage and bank, has covered Russian financial markets since 1995 for a variety of Western and Russian institutions. His strategy monthly, Truth and Beauty (and Russian Finance) is reliably provocative, contrarian and generally seeks to present the Russian viewpoint to Western audience.

Michael Hockney is a distinguished  photographer based in Canada. His portfolio spans three decades and has included over 50 exhibitions and several international productions for both  governments and corporations (www.michaelhockney.ca/about.htm). The photographer specializes in cultural essays and subjects that encourage better global understanding and perspective in a World that is often misrepresented with biased imagery. Michael is the founder of The Colours Group of Canada, an organization dedicated to these goals (www.thecoloursgroup.com). The photographer's principle focus is now to confront the unrepresentative images of modern Russia in what he sees as the single most important objective for a modern documentary maker. "Colours of Russia" is the photographer's flagship to present modern Russia to a World audience and was recently recognized by Itar-Tass for its authenticity and artistic balance. 

Joera Mulders studied Cultural Anthropoly and Russian language at the University of Amsterdam. Now he is an Internet entrepreneur and editor of EUNIS. 

Nicolai N. Petro is professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island. In addition to his academic publications, he writes an occasional blog devoted to news about Russia at OpEdNews.com. His professional web site is www.npetro.net 

Andrei Tsygankov is Professor at the departments of Political Science and International Relations at San Francisco State University. He teaches Russian/post-Soviet, comparative, and international politics. Tsygankov published widely in Western and Russian academia. In the West, he co-edited New Directions in Russian International Studies (2004), and he published Pathways after Empire (2001), Whose World Order? (2004), Russia’s Foreign Policy (2006), and Russophobia (forthcoming), as well as many journal articles. In Russia, his best known books are Russian Science of International Relations (2005, co-edited with Pavel Tsygankov, also published in Germany and China) and Sociology of International Relations (2006, co-authored with Pavel Tsygankov, also published in China). 

Chris Weafer is Chief Strategist with UralSib Financial Corporation in Moscow. UralSib is one of Russia’s biggest non-state owned financial groups combining activities in investment, corporate and retail banking, insurance and asset management. Chris was ranked the number one Russia markets strategist by the Thomson Extel-Interfax 2007 Survey. Prior to joining UralSib in 2007, he held a similar position for five years with Russia’s Alfa Bank. Before that he held the position of head of research at Troika Dialog, a local investment bank, for four years. In total, he has lived and worked in Moscow for almost eleven years. Before coming to Moscow in the summer of 1998, Chris was head of equity research in South East Asia for NatWest Markets, based in Thailand, for two years. Prior to this he was Senior Investment Manager for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest self-managed investment funds in the world. He held this position for seven years and was based in Abu Dhabi city. Mr. Weafer started his career in the investment industry, specifically in emerging markets, twenty-eight years ago with the Irish Life Assurance Company in Dublin. His held the position of head of research, and later Senior Portfolio Manager, for eight years.