Maria Koinova

Prof. Dr. Maria Koinova is Professor of International Relations at the University of Warwick, and one of the leading international scholars of transnational politics, migration, diasporas, conflict, and post-war reconstruction. She serves as a Director of the Centre for Studies in Democratisation at the University of Warwick, Deputy Editor of the Migration Studies journal at Oxford University Press, and is an elected member of the Executive Council of the Migration and Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). She is also the principal investigator of a research impact programme, "Engaging the Global Ukrainian Community for Ukraine's Recovery: Democracy and Human Rights Dimensions", conducted with financial support from the Research England Policy Support Fund, the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, and Warwick's Faculty of Social Sciences.

Over the past two decades, Prof. Koinova's research has transformed understanding of how actors beyond the state shape international politics. Her work has been particularly influential in establishing the study of diasporas as a major field within International Relations and Comparative Politics, demonstrating how migrant and diaspora communities influence conflict, peace-building, state-building, democratic development, and international governance across borders.

Professor Koinova has held fellowships and visiting appointments at leading academic institutions such as Harvard University (Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies), Cornell University, the University of Amsterdam, the European University Institute, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her first book, Ethnonationalist Conflict in Postcommunist States: Varieties of Governance in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Kosovo (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), explored why ethnic conflicts develop divergent trajectories in the post-communist world.

A defining contribution of her academic career was the European Research Council (ERC)-funded project Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty (2012-2017, 1.498.000 EUR), the first large-scale comparative study to place conflict-generated diasporas at the centre of international politics. Through extensive fieldwork, an original cross-national survey, and hundreds of interviews among six conflict-generated diasporas across Europe linked to the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, the project fundamentally reshaped scholarly understanding of how diasporas participate in conflicts, peace processes, and state-building. It informed a major body of international scholarship in journals such as European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Review, Review of International Studies, International Migration Review, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and culminated in her book Diaspora Entrepreneurs and Contested States (Oxford University Press, 2021).

In the years following her ERC project, Prof. Koinova expanded her research agenda from diaspora mobilisation to wider questions of governance, power, and political agency across borders. Through leading a work package in the EU Jean Monnet Network Between the EU and Russia (2016-2022), she contributed to debates on regional order, external governance, and political transformations in Europe's neighbourhood. In 2018, she received a research grant from the Centre for Global Cooperation Research at the University of Duisburg to lead the project Polycentric Governance of Transit Migration (2019-2020). The project explored informality, polycentric governance, and their regional dimensions within the European neighbourhood, while advancing theories of relational power in settings characterised by multiple centres of authority. This research was published in International Studies Review, Review of International Studies, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

More recently, Professor Koinova has become a leading voice on the role of the Global Ukrainian Community in Ukraine's recovery and democratic development. Since 2022, her expertise has been sought by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE-ODIHR), which invited her to contribute to and help shape emerging international discussions on engaging Ukrainians abroad in reconstruction and recovery efforts. Through a series of projects developed in partnership with OSCE-ODIHR, the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), Germany's Agency for International Development (GIZ), Ukraine's Professional Government Association, Vinnytsia City Council, and DIIA.Business, she has created a major international platform connecting governments, international organisations, civil society actors, local authorities, and members of the Global Ukrainian Community across Europe. Between 2023 and 2026, these efforts evolved into a large-scale impact programme (Over £100,000 by 2006) spanning six European countries and EU institutions. The programme has produced policy reports, a stakeholder training (2024), a workshop (2026), policy memoranda, and a growing community of practice focused on embedding democratic participation, human rights, and inclusive governance within Ukraine's recovery process.

Prof. Koinova's work has received international recognition. In 2025 she delivered the keynote address at the inaugural Diaspora Lab organised by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) during the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome, which established the foundations of the Diaspora Coalition for Ukraine. Her policy framework emphasises democratic participation, human rights, local governance, translocal partnerships, and the institutional inclusion of Ukrainians abroad as stakeholders in Ukraine's future.

Professor Koinova has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in International Security, Comparative Politics, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, Non-State Actors in International Relations, Politics of Post-Industrial States, and Europe, Democracy and the State.

In 2026-27, she teaches Russia in World Politics (Term 1) and The International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diasporas (Term 2).

Professor Koinova welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD and MA students, as well as opportunities to collaborate with postdoctoral researchers and faculty colleagues. She is particularly interested in supervising and collaborating on research related to:

• migration, displacement, diasporas, and transnational political mobilisation;
• conflict, peacebuilding, post-conflict recovery, and reconstruction;
• democratisation, governance, and political change in transnational and contested settings;
• Ukraine, the European neighbourhood, and post-communist and post-Soviet politics;
• non-state actors, sovereignty, and transnational politics in international relations.