Misha Glenny


Michael V. E. "Misha" Glenny is a British journalist, specialising in southeast Europe, global organised crime, and cybersecurity. He is multilingual.

Biography

Glenny was born in Kensington, London, the son of Juliet Mary Crum and Michael Glenny, a Russian studies academic. Glenny described his ancestry as "three-quarters Anglo-Celtic and a quarter Jewish".
He was educated at Magdalen College School in Oxford and studied at the University of Bristol and Prague's Charles University before becoming 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 1993's Sony Gold Award for his "outstanding contribution to broadcasting". He published three books about Central and Eastern Europe.
In McMafia, he wrote that international organised crime could account for 15% of the world's GDP. Glenny advised the US and some European governments on policy issues and for three years ran an NGO helping with the reconstruction of Serbia, North Macedonia and Kosovo. Glenny appeared in the documentary film, Raw Opium: Pain, Pleasure, Profits.
Glenny's later books continue an interest in international crime. DarkMarket concerns cybercrime and the activities of hackers involved in phishing and other activities. Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio about the leading Brazilian drug trafficker Antônio Francisco Bonfim Lopes in Rocinha, a favela.
From January 2012, Glenny was visiting professor at Columbia University's Harriman Institute, teaching a course on "crime in transition". In an interview in October 2011, he also spoke about his new 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.
Glenny was an executive producer of the BBC One eight-part drama series, McMafia, inspired by his non-fiction book of the same name.

Personal life

Glenny is married to British journalist and broadcaster Kirsty Lang and has three children, two by his first wife and one by Lang.

Publications