Stanislav Markus is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago. His first book is Property, Predation, and Protection: Piranha Capitalism in Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge University Press, 2015). The book elaborates a new theory of property rights in modern emerging economies. Markus's second book project investigates the politics of extreme wealth from the perspective of individual oligarchs in developing and post-communist democracies.

Markus is the winner of the 2014 Luebbert Award for Best Article in Comparative Politics (awarded by the American Political Science Association). He also received the Academy Scholar award from the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies in 2008-09 and 2011-12; the Senior Scholar Guest award from the Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies in Paris in 2014-15; and the Jean Monnet Fellowship from the European University Institute in Florence in 2015-16. His research on property rights, state-business relations, corporate governance, and rule of law has appeared or is forthcoming in World Politics, Daedalus, Comparative Political Studies, Socio-Economic Review, Studies in Comparative International Development, Polity, and other journals.

Please RSVP to Shani Brasier (sbrasier@uci.edu) if you plan on attending. Lunch will be provided.