Olexiy Haran is a Professor of Political Science at University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (UKMA) and Founding Director of the UKMA School for Policy Analysis. Dr. Haran received his B.A. from Kyiv University in 1981. He received his Kandidat degree in 1985 from Kyiv University and his Doktor degree in 1996 from the Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences. From 1985-1991 Haran was a research fellow at the Institute of History of Ukraine. From 1991-92, he was Dean and organizer of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the reborn Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, where he has taught since then. In 2005-2006, he was the Regional Vice President for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova at the Eurasia Foundation.
Dr. Haran has conducted research at Harvard and Columbia Universities, the Federal Institute for International and East European Studies (BIOst) in Cologne, and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) in London. He has given lectures on Ukrainian politics at RAND, Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia, Carnegie Endowment, BIOst, and SSEES. Haran has served as a member of the NGO Consultative Board at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine since 2000.
Dr. Haran is the author of the books To Kill the Dragon: From the History of Rukh and New Political Parties of Ukraine (1993) and Transatlantic Debates: The Turn of Western Europe to Détente and the Position of the USA (1990). He is also the editor of The Multi-Party System in Ukraine (1991), co-editor of The Ukrainian Left: Between Leninism and Social Democracy (2000) and Political and Economic Transformations in Russia and Ukraine (2003), and contributor to Ukraine at a Crossroads (Peter Lang New, 2005). He is co-author of the report "The reform driving forces in a rent-seeking society: Lessons from the Ukrainian transition" (2007) for the Global Research Project on Understanding Reform.