A Comparative Politics specialist, I work on democracy and democratization -- especially religion and politics, as well as transitional justice -- in post-communist Europe. My research has been generously funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) with multiple research grants. I obtained a doctorate from the University of Toronto, and a Doctor Honoris Causa from the University Ovidius of Constanta, Romania.

In the field of religion and politics, I co-authored with Dr. Lucian Turcescu Church, State, and Democracy in Expanding Europe, and Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania (published by Oxford University Press in 2011 and 2007, respectively). We are currently investigating resistance against and collaboration with the communist regimes of religious denominations in Central and Eastern Europe.

My transitional justice books include Post-Communist Transitional Justice: Lessons from 25 Years of Experience  (co-edited with Dr. Nadya Nedelsky, Cambridge University Press, 2015), Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice (co-edited with Nadya for CUP in 2013), Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania (CUP, 2013), Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (Routledge, 2009), as well as Justice, Memory and Redress in Romania: New Insights (edited with Lucian in 2017). In 2019, I co-edited another volume on reckoning in the Former Soviet Union with Dr. Cynthia Horne for Cambridge University Press.

A former member of the Scientific Council of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of Romanian Exile, and a member of the National Council for the Recognition of University Titles, Diplomas and Certificates of the Romanian Ministry of Education, I also served on Committee 15 of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the adjudication committees of the Romanian Executive Agency for Higher Education Research, Development and Innovation Funding. I am Past President of the Society for Romanian Studies, and a member of the Club of Rome and of the scientific/advisory boards of more than twenty academic journals. In 2009, I participated in the project on "How the memory of crimes committed by totalitarian regimes is dealt with in the member states” funded by the Directorate-General of Justice, Freedom and Security (European Commission) and became Associate Editor for the peer-reviewed Women's Studies International Forum. I am co-founder (and former co-editor) of Journal of Romanian Studies, published by Ibidem and the Society for Romanian Studies, as well as of the Romanian Studies book series, which the Society publishes with Polirom. In 2019, I was appointed Coordinator for the PGOV program of the Mulroney Institute of Government.

I regularly serve as Expert Witness in court cases of property restitution, communist repression, as well as asylum and deportation.