Dr Maria Falina is a historian of modern and contemporary Eastern Europe. Her research focuses on intellectual and political history, memory and political uses of the past, history of religion, nationalism and state-building, and categories of inclusion and exclusion. 

Maria co-authored with an international team of researchers the first synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe: "A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe" published in two volumes by the Oxford University Press in 2016 and 2018. Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' and Volume II: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Short Twentieth Century' and Beyond, Part I: 1918-1968 and Volume II: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Short Twentieth Century' and Beyond, Part II: 1968-2018

Her most recent book Religion and Politics in Interwar Yugoslavia: Serbian Nationalism and East Orthodox Christianity explores the interaction between religion, nationalism, and political modernity in the first half of the 20th century, taking the case of the Serbian Orthodox Church as an example.  

Maria's current research focuses on the politics of the past in post-Soviet Russia, including the role and place of religious discourses and non-state actors. 

Maria received her PhD from Central European University in 2011. Before joining Utrecht University in August 2023, she was an Assistant Professor of European history at Dublin City University (2016-2023). Prior to that, Maria was an IRC postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for War Studies and lecturer at the School of History and Archives at University College Dublin (2013-2016), and a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at CEU (2011-2013).