John Heathershaw is a professor of international relations at the University of Exeter. He is co-author of Dictators Without Borders (Yale University Press, 2017) and principal investigator of the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence project (2019–21) on the transnational ties of elites from authoritarian states. In 2021–22, he holds the British Academy’s Saki Ruth Dockrill senior research fellowship in contemporary history and international security studies.
Alexander Cooley is Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University and director of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute for the Study of Russia, Eurasia and Eastern Europe. He is co-author of Dictators Without Borders (Yale University Press, 2017) and of Exit from Hegemony: The Unravelling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). Professor Cooley’s research examines how external actors have shaped the development and sovereignty of the former Soviet states, with a focus on central Asia and the Caucasus.
Thomas Mayne is a visiting fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and a research fellow at the University of Exeter. His research focuses on kleptocracy in central Asia, how dark money from kleptocracies reaches the Global North, and regulations regarding money laundering. He was formerly a senior campaigner at Global Witness, where he was responsible for the group’s investigative reporting on Central Asia and corruption in the oil and gas industry.
Casey Michel is a US writer and journalist who covers transnational finance, foreign interference and kleptocracy. He is adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, and the author of American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History (St Martin’s Press, 2021), which examines the US’s transformation into one of the world’s premier offshore and financial secrecy jurisdictions.
Tena Prelec is a research fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, and a research associate at LSEE-Research on South Eastern Europe, London School of Economics and Political Science. Her work focuses on anti-corruption, money laundering and reputation laundering, and rule of law reforms in democratizing countries.
Jason Sharman is the Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, as well as a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. He was educated in Australia, Russia and the US, and earlier held positions at the American University in Bulgaria, the University of Sydney and Griffith University.
Ricardo Soares de Oliveira is a professor of the international politics of Africa at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford; an official fellow of St Peter’s College; and a fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. He is co-editor of African Affairs, the journal of the Royal African Society, and co-director of the Oxford Martin School’s Programme on African Governance.
