A graduate in Political Science at the University of Toronto, I was born in Romania but emigrated to Canada shortly after the December 1989 revolution that helped Romania move away from communist dictatorship. Most of my work has dealt with broad issues of post-communist democratization, transitional justice, as well as religion and politics. I have taught at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada for more than twenty years, also serving as vice-president and president of the Society for Romanian Studies, Associate Editor of East European Politics & Societies and Women's Studies International Forum, and editorial board member of more than twenty scholarly journals in North America and Europe. Most of my work in transitional justice has been published with Cambridge University Press, including the 3-volume Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice (first published in 2013, and now in production again). My books on religion and politics have appeared with Oxford University Press, and focus a lot on Orthodoxy and democratization. I am living in Montreal, but have a summer residence in Puglia, Italy, with olive and fig trees, close to the Torre Guacetto beach.
Lavinia Stan is a professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada.