Associate Professor at McGill, Jean Monnet Chair

Maria Popova is a Jean Monnet Chair and Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University in Montreal. She is also the Scientific Co-Director of the Jean Monnet Centre Montreal. She holds a BA in Spanish Literature and Government from Dartmouth College (1997) and a PhD in Government from Harvard University (2006). Maria has lived and conducted research across Eastern Europe and Eurasia in its various regime incarnations—from growing up in Bulgaria before 1989, through interviewing judges and lawyers in Russia and Ukraine for dissertation research in the 2000s, to her current attempt to disentangle real from fake anti-corruption efforts in Bulgaria, Romania, and Ukraine. Maria’s work explores the intersection of politics and law in the post-Communist region, specifically the rule of law, judicial reform, political corruption, populist parties, and legal repression of dissent.