Professor Samuel Greene

Sam Greene is professor in Russian politics at King’s College London. Prior to moving to London in 2012 to join King’s, he lived and worked in Moscow for 13 years, most recently as director of the Centre for the Study of New Media & Society at the New Economic School, and as deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. He holds a PhD in political sociology from the London School of Economics & Political Science.

His most recent book, co-authored with Graeme Robertson, is Putin v the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia, published in 2019 by Yale University Press. His previous book, Moscow in Movement: Power & Opposition in Putin’s Russia, was published in 2014 by Stanford University Press. Sam’s academic work has been published in leading disciplinary and area studies journals, including Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, The Journal of Democracy, Post-Soviet Affairs and Problems of Post-Communism. He regularly contributes opinion and analysis pieces to general interest publications, such as The Washington Post, The Moscow Times, Foreign Policy, The New Statesman and others, and is a frequent commentator in British, American, Russian and European broadcast and print media.

Alongside his work at King’s, Sam is an Associate Fellow of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a Trustee of Pushkin House, and Editor-in-Chief of Russian Politics & Law.

Research

Sam’s research focuses on the relationships of power in Russia, in authoritarianism, and in societies experiencing social, economic and political transformation more broadly. He seeks to deploy a variety of mostly qualitative approaches from political science and political sociology to uncover citizens’ evolving understanding of their state, their identity as citizens and the meaning of their political community. In addition, Sam has a particular interest in online social media, both as a factor in social mobilization and political mobilization, and as a venue for conducting new kinds of research.

Sam is open to supervising PhD projects on any of these themes, particularly with reference to Russia and the post-Soviet region.

Teaching

• Contemporary Russian Politics and Policy
• The Sociology of Politics
• Power and Social Conflict