Misha Glenny

Michael V. E. "Misha" Glenny^[1] (born 25 April 1958) is a British journalist and broadcaster, specialising in southeast Europe, global organised crime, and cybersecurity. He has been Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM, Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen) in Vienna, Austria since 2022.^[2]

Glenny in 2016

Early life and education

Glenny was born in Kensington, London, the son of Juliet Mary Crum and Michael Glenny, a Russian studies academic and translator.^[3] His parents separated when he was 13. Glenny described his ancestry as "three-quarters Anglo-Celtic and a quarter Jewish".^[4] He is multilingual, speaking English, German, Serbo-Croat, Czech and Portuguese.^[5][6]

Career

He became Central Europe correspondent for The Guardian and later the BBC. He specialised in reporting on the Yugoslav Wars in the early 1990s that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia. While at the BBC, Glenny won Sony special award in 1993's Radio Academy Awards for his "outstanding contribution to broadcasting".^[7] In McMafia (2008), he wrote that international organised crime could account for 15% of the world's GDP.^[8] Glenny advised the US and some European governments on policy issues and for three years ran an NGO helping with the reconstruction of Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo. Glenny appeared in the documentary film, Raw Opium: Pain, Pleasure, Profits (2011).^[9]

Glenny's later books continue an interest in international crime.^[10] DarkMarket (2011) concerns cybercrime and the activities of hackers involved in phishing and other activities.^[11] Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio (2015) about the leading Brazilian drug trafficker Antônio Francisco Bonfim Lopes (known as "Nem") in Rocinha ("Little farm"), a favela (slum).^[12][13]

From January 2012, Glenny was visiting professor at Columbia University's Harriman Institute,^[14] teaching a course on "crime in transition". In an interview in October 2011, he also spoke about his book, DarkMarket; assessing cybercriminals with Simon Baron-Cohen at Cambridge; the Stuxnet cyberattack which resulted in "gloves off" attention from governments; and other more recent cyberattacks.^[15]

Glenny was an executive producer of the BBC One eight-part drama series, McMafia, inspired by his non-fiction book of the same name (2008).^[16]

Glenny is a producer and the writer of the BBC Radio 4 series, How to Invent a Country, ^[17] also made available as a podcast. An audio book of the same name was published by Penguin Random House in January 2021, consisting of the series' first 28 episodes broadcast October 2011–March 2019.^[18]

In 2019, Glenny presented a podcast on the life of Vladimir Putin titled Putin: Prisoner of Power.^[19]

In 2022, Glenny presented a five-part series, The Scramble for Rare Earths, on BBC Radio 4. In the programmes he says, “In this series I’m finding out why the battle for a small group of metals and critical raw materials is central to rising geopolitical tensions around the world.” ^[20]

Personal life

Glenny is married to British journalist and broadcaster Kirsty Lang and has three children, two by his first wife (their daughter took her own life in 2014)^[10] and one by Lang.^[3]

Publications

• The Rebirth Of History: Eastern Europe in the Age of Democracy (1991) ISBN 978-0-14014-394-2
• The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War (1992; revised in 1996) ISBN 978-0-14025-771-7
• The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804–1999 (1999; revised 2012) ISBN 978-1-77089-273-6
• McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (2008) ISBN 978-0-09948-125-6
• DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You (2011) ISBN 978-0307592934
• Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio (2015) ISBN 978-0-09958-465-0

See also

• True crime