Professor Kotkin is involved in a number of Princeton, academic and corporate activities. At Princeton, Professor Kotkin is currently the director of the Program in Russian Studies, Princeton University. He is also a member of the Advisory Board, Center of International Studies (2002), the Editorial Board and Trustees, Princeton University Press (2003) and a host of other organizations on campus.

In the academic field he is a member of the Social Science Research Council, Committee on Russia and Eurasia (2001) and has long been an editorial board member for International Labor and Working Class History (ILWCH, 1994), as well as acting in a number of other positions in Rem Koolhass Harvard Project on the City (2001), Kritika: Explorations in European and Eurasian History (1999), and many other organizations.

He is currently writing a book entitled Lost in Siberia: Dreamworlds of Eurasia. It's a study of the Ob River valley -- which runs from the Altai Mountains to the Arctic -- over seven centuries, based on local archives, and it combines approaches from the Annales school and from the twentieth-century avant-garde. His research interests range across Eurasia, from Japan to Britain, in the modern period, and include topics such as empire, nation building, political corruption, modernity and modernism.