Lavinia Stan

Lavinia Stan

Lavinia Stan (born 1966) is a professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada, known for her work on post-communist democratization. She is a prominent figure in transitional justice scholarship, religion and politics, as well as democratization studies.

Education and career

After obtaining a degree from the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, she emigrated to Canada in 1991. Stan then earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto. Stan is a Professor of Political Science at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. In November 2024, she was appointed European Research Area (ERA) Chair at the University Lucian Blaga in Sibiu, Romania. She supervises doctoral students in Political Science at the University of Bucharest, Romania.

As Vice-President and then President of the Society for Romanian Studies, the premier international organization on Romanian Studies, in 2010–2019, she launched two key publication venues in the field of Romanian Studies: a book series sponsored jointly by the SRS and the largest academic publisher in Romania, Polirom, and the peer-reviewed Journal of Romanian Studies. She has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed Women's Studies International Forum, a high-impact scholarly review published by Elsevier. In December 2023, she was appointed Editor of East European Politics and Societies, one of the leading academic journals publishing on that region. Stan has also served as an expert witness in a dozen of cases on deportation and asylum, as well as property restitution and corruption, in American and British courts. She is a member of the editorial boards of several journals.

Publications

Lavinia Stan is well-known for her contributions in three major areas: transitional justice, religion and politics, and democratization broadly conceived. Her work has been funded by Horizon Europe, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Brian Mulroney Institute of Governance, the British Arts and Humanities Research Council, Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security of the European Commission, and other institutions to the tune of over 3 million Euros.

In her works on religion and politics in post-communist Romania, Stan made the point that the majority Orthodox Church must be reigned in, if democracy is to be consolidated. The collaboration of the Church with the communist-era secret police, the Securitate, was another research topic for her, together with the restitution of property from the Orthodox to the Greek Catholics. Stan's work on transitional justice in post-communist countries has gained wide recognition for her attention to the way in which civil society actors, even "political entrepreneurs" working in isolation from others, can advance reckoning in countries where state actors are unwilling to do so. Stan is one of the foremost scholars in Romanian Studies, having helped consolidate the field internationally.

She has authored, co-authored or edited the following volumes:

Transitional justice

• Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice. Cambridge University Press, 2023, second edition. ISBN 9781108678537. Co-edited with Nadya Nedelsky.
• Transitional Justice and the Former Soviet Union: Reviewing the Past, Looking toward the Future. Cambridge University Press, 2018. ISBN 1107198135. Co-edited with Cynthia M. Horne.
• Post-Communist Transitional Justice: Lessons from Twenty-Five Years of Experience. Cambridge University Press, 2015. ISBN 1107065569. Co-edited with Nadya Nedelsky.
• Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice. Cambridge University Press, 2013, first edition. ISBN 9780521196277. Co-edited with Nadya Nedelsky.
• Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania: The Politics of Memory. Cambridge University Press, 2013. ISBN 9781107020535.
• Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Reckoning with the Communist Past. Routledge, 2009. ISBN 978-0-415-59041-9. Romanian translation: Prezentul trecutului recent: Lustrație și decomunizare în postcomunism. Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2010. ISBN 978-973-669-956-6.

Religion and politics

• Churches, Memory and Justice in Post-Communism. Springer, 2021. ISBN 978-3-030-56063-8. Co-edited with L. Turcescu.
• Church Reckoning with Communism in Post-1989 Romania. Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. ISBN 978-1498580274. Co-edited with L. Turcescu.
• Justice, Memory and Redress in Romania: New Insights. Cambridge Scholars, 2017. ISBN 978-1-4438-3152-9. Co-edited with L. Turcescu.
• Church, State and Democracy in Expanding Europe. Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-19-533710-5. Co-authored with L. Turcescu.
• Religion and Politics in Post-communist Romania. Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-19-530853-0. Romanian translation: Religie si politica in Romania postcomunista. Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2010. ISBN 978-973-669-966-5. Co-authored with L. Turcescu.

Democratization

• East Central Europe since 1989: Politics, Culture, and Society. Routledge, 2024. ISBN 9781032319209. Co-authored with Sabrina P. Ramet.
• Post-Communist Progress and Stagnation at 35: The Case of Romania. Springer, 2024. ISBN 978-3031557491. Co-edited with Diane Vancea.
• Post-Communist Romania at 25: Civic and Uncivic Values and Institutions. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. ISBN 1498501117. Co-edited with Diane Vancea.
• 1989–2009: Incredibila aventura a democratiei dupa comunism (interviews with Western and Romanian specialists on Eastern Europe on the occasion of 20 years since the collapse of communism). Iași, Romania: Editura Institutul European, 2010. ISBN 978-973-611-657-5.
• Leaders and Laggards: Governance, Civicness and Ethnicity in Post-Communist Romania. Columbia University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-88033-513-3.
• Romania in Transition. Dartmouth College Press, 1997. ISBN 978-1-85521-886-4.

Translations into Romanian

In addition, Stan translated two volumes into Romanian:

• Étienne de La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, trans. from French with Sabina Elena Stan. Bucharest: Universal Dalsi Press, 1994.
• Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, trans. with Lucian Turcescu, Bucharest: Universal Dalsi Press, 1995.

Annual reports on Moldova and Romania

From 1997 to 2003 she published the quarterly report on the Republic of Moldova in East European Constitutional Review, while since 2006 she has co-authored the annual report regarding political developments in Romania for European Journal of Political Research.

External links

• Faculty website at St. Francis Xavier University
• Personal blog
• Academia.edu page of Lavinia Stan
• Getcited.org page of Lavinia Stan Archived 9 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine
• Society for Romanian Studies homepage (Dec. 2024)