Nikolai Genov is an internationally respected sociologist of Bulgarian origin. He received his doctorate of Philosophy in sociology from the University of Leipzig in 1975 and his doctorate of Science from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1986. In 1990 he became a professor at BAS. Between 2002 and 2011 he was a professor of sociology at the Institute of Sociology and Institute of Eastern European Studies of the Free University of Berlin. From 2011 until 2016 he was the head of the Institute of Global and Regional Development at the School of Advanced Social Studies in Slovenia. He has conducted research and taught at the universities of Berkeley, Bielefeld, Frankfurt am Main, Cassel, Lund, Moscow, Rome, Seoul, and Warsaw.
