Grzegorz Ekiert is Professor of Government at Harvard University, Director of Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, and Senior Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. His teaching and research interests focus on comparative politics, regime change and democratization, civil society and social movements, and East European politics and societies. He is the author of The State Against Society: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East Central Europe (1996); Rebellious Civil Society: Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland (with J. Kubik, 1999); Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe: Assessing the Legacy of Communist Rule (co-edited with S. Hanson, 2003); editor of special issues of East European Politics and Societies on the EU Eastward Enlargement (with J. Zielonka, 2003) and on Democracy in the Postcommunist World (2007) and Taiwan Journal of Democracy on A Liberal Challenge? Civil Society and Grass-root Politics in New Democracies (with Sunhyuk Kim, 2013). His current projects explore civil society development in new democracies in Central Europe and East Asia and patterns of political and economic transformations in the post-communist world.