Mark Bassin gained his PhD at the University of California-Berkeley in 1983. He has taught at UCLA, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and UCL, and held visiting positions at the Universities of Chicago, Copenhagen, and Pau (France). He has received numerous personal fellowships, including from the Fulbright Foundation, the Kennan Institute, Remarque Institute NYU, Slavic Research Center (Sapporo), and Institute for European History (Mainz). His research has also been supported by grants from the AHRC, British Academy, DAAD, NCEEER, NEH, and the Ford Foundation. From 1996-2004 he served as Secretary for the Commission for the History of Geographic Thought of the International Geographical Union.

Bassin has been a consultant for the World Economic Forum, and was a founding member of the Valdai Forum in Moscow, in which capacity he met on several occasions with former President Vladimir Putin and members of his government. Bassin sits on numerous advisory boards for international journals, and since 1999 has been Associate Editor for the journal Geopolitics. From 2006-2009 he was on study leave, supported by a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. Bassin is also Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham.