has been Professor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Geneva from 1992, since 2000 as ‘professeur honoraire’. He presides the ‘Rencontres internationales de Genèves’ and directed the European Institute of Geneva from 1996 to 2000. Previously, he was Research Fellow at the universities of Harvard and Stanford. Nivat dedicated himself to the study of dissident Russian literature, and wrote books, among other things, on Solzhenitsyn. He published an impressive trilogy on Russian culture: Vers la fin du mythe russe (1982), Russie-Europe, la fin du schisme (1988) and Vivre en russe (2007). Nivat wrote extensively on post communist Russia, and contributed two books to the ‘Regards’-series. He is the editor and co-author of the monumental encyclopaedia Histoire de la littérature russe, published by Fayard. For the same publishing house Nivat supervised the series Les Sites de la mémoire russe and the works a great number of contemporary Russian authors. Nivat is Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and was awarded an honorary doctorate at the Mohyla Academy in Kiev and the Russian Pushkin Prize. His works has been translated into Russian, Ukrainian and Romanian.