Dr Tina Jennings

Dr Tina Podplatnik Jennings returned to Oxford in 2007 as a Visiting Fellow of St Antony’s Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre, having received her doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2005. Canadian-born of Slovene origin, Tina has enjoyed a long association with St Antony’s, beginning as a graduate student in 1991 (MPhil, Russian and East European Studies, 1993), then again as a doctoral student whilst living in Moscow (DPhil, Politics, 2005). She received her undergraduate degree in Political Science and Russian from McGill University, Montreal in 1988.

In 1990-91, she spent a year at Leningrad State University (LGU) on an academic exchange scholarship from Carleton University, Ottawa during the fateful year preceding the USSR’s collapse in 1991. She completed an MA in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs in 1991.

Upon receiving her MPhil, from 1994 to 2001 Tina worked in investment banking in London and in Moscow, first with Credit Suisse First Boston, and then as Head of Research at Raiffeisenbank Austria. During this time, she published ‘Improving the Environment for Foreign Investment’ in Doing Business with Russia, edited by Marat Terterov et al. (2001). In 2001 she began her doctoral work with a focus on Russian business and industrial groups, and their interaction with Russian political institutions, which culminated in a study of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) during Putin’s first presidential term. Her DPhil dissertation was awarded the Michael Kaser Prize for best doctoral dissertation in the field of economics and political economy of Russia and Eurasia in 2005. During her Visiting Fellowship at St Antony’s, she completed a book, The State and Big Business in Russia: Understanding Kremlin-Business Relations in the Early Putin Era, to be published by Routledge in 2021. Her research interests focus on contemporary Russian politics and foreign policy. Dr Jennings has chaired and participated in the annual ‘The Russian State and Big Business’ panel at the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) Conventions for over 10 years.

Upon receiving her DPhil from Oxford in 2005, Dr Jennings was appointed the first head of Sotheby’s for the Russian Federation, establishing a commercial foothold and auction presence for the company in the Russian market. The appointment reflected her long-standing interest in and knowledge of Russian works of art, as well as a passion for collecting that arose during her many years in Moscow.