Maria Popova

Guest Author

Maria Popova (Bluesky – LinkedIn – X) is an Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University and Scientific Director of the Jean Monnet Centre Montreal. Her work explores the rule of law and democracy in Eastern Europe. Her first book Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies, which won the American Association for Ukrainian Studies book prize in 2013, examines the weaponization of law to manipulate elections and control the media in Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s-2000s. Her recent articles have focused on rule of law and anticorruption reforms in post-Maidan Ukraine, the politics of anticorruption campaigns in Eastern Europe, conspiracies and illiberalism. Her 2024 book with Oxana Shevel on the roots of the Russo-Ukrainian war entitled “Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States” argues that gradual regime and identity divergence, rather than NATO expansion, explain Russia’s post-2014 military aggression against Ukraine.