A political scientist with an interest in democratization, I have blogged since 2010. While my primary expertise is European politics, more recently I’ve become interested in Latin America, South Africa and other countries that have engaged in “the politics of the past.” I’ve published on a variety of themes, ranging from spies and social capital to lustration and religion and politics in British, American, Canadian, French, Romanian, and Moldovan scholarly journals.

Most of my work, though, deals with two topics: religion and politics, and transitional justice. I’ve worked with Lucian Turcescu on the first, and published the resulting books with Oxford University Press, and with Nadya Nedelsky on the second, publishing our work mostly with Cambridge University Press. Smaller projects include an annual report written for the peer-reviewed European Journal of Political Research, the flagship of the European Consortium of Political Science, and a series of articles on how motions of no-confidence are employed in post-communist settings.

Currently, I have one new big project on my desk. This is a book in which my husband and I will try to explain why some religious groups oppose, while others support, dictatorial regimes around the world. We discuss examples drawn from Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, but also keep a theoretical focus that allows us to examine cross-country patterns and draw general conclusions. Another volume on my desk is co-edited and deals with post-communist Romania’s evolution since 1989.

Since 2009 I am also a member of the Club of Rome, an Associate Editor for Europe for the internationally acclaimed, peer-reviewed Women’s Studies International Forum, and member of the Editorial or Scientific Board of twenty North American and European scholarly journals.

These are my books:

Thanks for visiting my blog. My institutional webpage is at http://people.stfx.ca/lstan/Lala/Welcome.html.