Having first studied African languages and history at Moscow State University, Georgi Derluguian saw his first war in Mozambique in the 1980s. Having returned from Africa to Moscow in 1989, he saw with astonishment that parts of the unraveling Soviet Union were rapidly coming to resemble Africa’s politics of corruption as well as its civil wars. Georgi’s first-hand study of Soviet collapse culminated in the award-winning monograph Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer in the Caucasus (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Its main question was simple: What processes and contingencies transformed the provincial Soviet intellectuals, once enamored with French cinema and sociology, into ferocious guerrilla fighters for nationalist and religious causes?
In the past, Georgi taught as an Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Studies at Northwestern University. He was also a Visiting professor at Sciences Po and Université de Bordeaux in France, as well as Tallinn Technological University in Estonia and Kiev State University in Ukraine.
EDUCATION
- 1995 Ph.D., Department of Sociology and Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations, State University of New York at Binghamton.
- 1990 Doctorate (kandidat nauk) in modern political history, Africa Sector, Institute of World History, the USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
- 1985 Suma cum laude in African History, Institute of Afro-Asian Studies at Moscow State University.
ACADEMIC POSTS
- 2012 – present Professor of Social Research and Public Policy, New York University Abu Dhabi
- 1997 – 2011 Assistant and Associate Professor (tenured in 2004), Department of Sociology and International Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
- 1996 – 1997 Jennings Randolph Fellow, US Institute of Peace, Washington, DC.
- 1995 – 1996 Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
