Georgi Derluguian
Georgi Matveyevich Derluguian (born 25 October 1961 in Krasnodar, Russia) is a sociologist and historian of Armenian, Russian, and Ukrainian descent. He specializes in ethnic violence, guerrilla movements, revolutions, and post‑Cold War globalization, with a focus on the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Africa. He is a professor of Social Research and Public Policy at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Education and career: He earned a master's in African studies from Moscow State University in 1985, spent time in Mozambique during its civil war, and worked as an adviser to the Soviet planners there. He earned his PhD in history from the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1990 and a PhD in sociology from Binghamton University in 1995, studying under Immanuel Wallerstein. He has taught at Cornell University, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the University of Michigan, and Northwestern University, and since 2013 has been based at NYU Abu Dhabi in the Middle East.
Works and recognitions: Derluguian is best known for Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus (2005), a study of Musa Shanibov, a Kabardino-Balkarian intellectual who became a warlord after the Soviet collapse. The book was a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year in 2006 and won the Norbert Elias Essay Prize in 2007. He wrote the prologue for Anna Politkovskaya’s A Small Corner of Hell, and he was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2001. He has been a Kennan Institute fellow and writes for the Russian magazine Expert. He is working on a new book, A World History of Ichkeria, about Chechnya.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 08:50 (CET).