Marija Stambolieva is a research associate at the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrueck. She holds a PhD in social sciences from the University of Kassel.
’Stambolieva combines comparative welfare state analysis with an actor-centred approach. She explains how national elites, social groups and global players shape policy choices in the context of a common socialist legacy but in variable transition processes leading to quite different contemporary social policy approaches in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia. It is a fine contribution to the genre.’ -Bob Deacon, Universities of Sheffield and York, UK 'Perhaps because Marija Stambolieva represents a new generation of serious scholars from the region itself, she knows what really matters to its people; focusing on welfare instead of war and ethnic conflict, she not only contributes an empirically rich, deeply knowledgeable, and beautifully written study to the literature on welfare systems in general from cases of post-socialist transition, but also a rare window onto actual politics in Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia.’ -Susan L. Woodward, City University of New York, USA