Mark Bassin

Bassin gained his Ph.D at the University of California, Berkeley in 1983. He has taught at UCLA, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and University College London, and held visiting positions at the Universities of Chicago, Copenhagen, and Pau in France.[1] He is currently holds a Professorship in Human Geography at the University of Birmingham.[2]

He has received personal fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Kennan Institute, the Remarque Institute at New York University, the American Academy in Berlin, the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center in Sapporo, and the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz. His research has also been supported by grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the British Academy, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), NCEEER, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Ford Foundation.[1]

From 1996-2004 he served as Secretary for the Commission for the History of Geographic Thought of the International Geographical Union.[1]

He has been a consultant for the World Economic Forum, and is a founding member of the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow, in which capacity he meets yearly with the Russian President and members of his government.[1]

Since 1999, Bassin has been Associate Editor for the journal Geopolitics.

• Classical Eurasianism and the Geopolitics of Russian Identity
• “Civilizations and their Discontents: Geography and Geopolitics in the Huntington Thesis,” article in Geopolitics
• “Ethno-Landscapes and Ethno-Parasites: Lev Gumilev’s Ecology of Ethnicity,” chapter in Ethnosymbolism: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity and Nationalism. Essays in Honor of Anthony Smith; Athena Leoussi and Stephen Grosby, eds; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• “Geographies of Imperial Identity,” chapter in The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. II, Dominic Lieven, ed, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• “The Morning of our Motherland (painting by Fedor Shurpin)” chapter in The Russian Visual Documents Reader, Valerie Kievelson and Joan Newberger, eds, New Haven: Yale University Press
• 2006 “Mackinder’s Heartland and the Politics of Space in post-Soviet Russia” (with K.E. Aksenov), Geopolitics 11: 1
• 2005 “Blood or Soil? The volkisch movement, the Nazis, and the legacy of Geopolitik,” chapter in How Green were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich, Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, Marc Cioc, and Thomas Zeller, eds, Athens OH: Ohio University Press: 204-242
• 2005 “The Political Spaces of Modernity,” Conoscere il mondo: Vespucci e la modernitè (Memoire Geografiche, Nuova Serie, 5): 163-176.
• 2005 «Россия между Азии и Европы: идеологическое конструирование географического пространства» chapter in Российская империя в современной зарубежной литературы [The Russian Empire in Contemporary Foreign Literature] Paul Werth, Aleksei Miller, and Pavel Kabytov, eds. Moscow: Зарубежная Литература, pp. 277–310.
• 2004 “Historical Geography: Locating Time in the Spaces of Modernity” (with Vincent. Berdoulay), chapter in Human Geography: A History for the 21st Century, Georges Benko and Ulf Strohmeyer, eds. London: Arnold: 64-82.

translated as: “La Géographie historique: localiser le temps dans les espaces de la modernité” (with Vincent Berdoulay), chapter in Horizons géographiques, Georges Benko and Ulf Strohmeyer, eds. Paris: Brèal: 291-338. Translation of 2004a.

• 2004 “The Two Faces of Contemporary Geopolitics,” Progress in Human Geography 28: 620-626
• 2004 “Tristes Toponymies: What’s Wrong with Eurasia,” Ab Imperio 1: 178-183.
• 2003 География и Идентичность в Постсоветской России [Geography and Identity in Post-Soviet Russia]; Edited (with Konstantin E. Aksenov). St. Petersburg. Геликон-Плюс: 2003, 271pp.
• 2003 “Between Realism and the ‘New Right’: Geopolitics in Germany in the 1990s,” Transactions IBG 28:3 New Series: 350-366.
• 2003 “Politics From Nature: Environment, Ideology, and the Determinist Tradition,” chapter in A Companion to Political Geography, John Agnew, Katherine Mitchell, and Gerard Toal, eds. Basingstoke: Blackwell; 14-29
• 2003 “The Greening of Utopia: Nature, Social Vision, and Landscape Art in Stalinist Russia,” chapter in Architectures Of Russian Identity, 1500–Present, James Cracraft and Dan Rowland, eds. Ithaca: Cornell University Press; 150-171.
• 2003 "Siberia as discursive space: The geo-psychology of nationalism in 19th century Russia", Годишњак за друштвену историју/Annual for Social History (Belgrad) 10: 1-2: 27-50
• 2003 “Classical Eurasianism and the Geopolitics of Russian Identity,” Ab Imperio 2: 257-267.

Translated as: «Классическое евразийство и геополитки русской идентичности» chapter in Новая Имперская История Постсоветского Пространства [New Imperial History of Post-Soviet Space], Ilya Gerasimov, Sergei Glebov, Aleksandr Kaplunovskii, Marina Mogil’ner, Aleksandr Semenov, eds. Kazan: Центр Исслед. Нац. и Империи, 2004: 563-572.

• 2003 «К вопросу о географии национальной идентичности» [Questioning the Geography of National Identity], in 2003a: 10-17.
• 2002 “Imperialer Raum/Nationaler Raum: Sibirien auf der kognitiven Landkarte Rußlands im 19. Jahrhundert“ [Imperial Space/National Space: Siberia on the Cognitive Map of Russia in the 19th Century], Geschichte und Gesellschaft: Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft 28:3, pp. 378–403 [in German]
• 2002 “Мыслить пространством: Eurasia And Ethno-Territoriality In Post-Soviet Maps,” chapter in S.K Frank and I.P. Smirnov, eds, Zeit-Räume. Neue Tendenzen in der historischen Kulturforschung aus der Perspektive der Slavistik (Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Bd. 49): 15-35.
• 2001 “Renaissance der Geopolitik” [The Renaissance of Geopolitics], Der Tagesspiegel (Berlin) No. 17523 (9 September), p. B4 [in German]
• 2001 `“Reading the Natural and the Social,” Intro. to Nature as Space: (re)understanding Nature and Natural Environments, Guven Sargen, ed, Ankara: MfY/METU; pp. 1–11.
• Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East 1840-1865. Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-521-39174-0

• "River of Dreams: Fleeting Visions of a Siberian Mississippi", Review of Bassins's book Imperial Visions, by Ilya Vinkovetsky.