Geoffrey Hosking was professor of Russian history in the School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University of London, from 1984 to 2007. He has written many books and articles on the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, and gave the BBC Reith Lectures on the crisis of the Soviet Union in 1988. He was on the Council of Index on Censorship from 1986 to 2007. In 2006/07, he was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, working on the history of trust, and co-directed a series of seminars on the subject at the European Forum Alpbach in 2009.