Markku Jalmari Kivinen (born June 5, 1951 in Helsinki, Finland) is a professor of sociology and the director of the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki, Finland, since 1996. Kivinen's academic expertise is social theory, Russian domestic and foreign policy, transition studies in comparative perspective, social inequality, power and democracy, cultural structures and macro processes. He has more than 300 publications on key sociological topics. He is director of the Finnish Graduate School for Russian and East European Studies, as well as many research projects funded by the Academy of Finland, EU and NordForsk.Since 2012 Kivinen is leading one of the Academy of Finland's Centres of Excellence (CoE) in Research, "Choices of Russian Modernisation". Markku Kivinen is series ed