Maria Skóra

Maria Skóra is an independent consultant and advisor affiliated with the Institut für Europäische Politik as a Research Fellow and a Policy Fellow at Das Progressive Zentrum. In 2019, she was a Visiting Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and AGI’s American-German Situation Room. Previously, she worked for the Humboldt-Viadrina Governance Platform and the Hertie School. She is based in Berlin and holds an MA in Sociology and a PhD in Economics.

Her interdisciplinary research focuses on (re)democratization, populism, and political sociology. From 2022 to 2024, she was a lead researcher at RESILIO, a project exploring the determinants of rule of law resilience in EU27. Her work also focused on how to improve the EU’s rule of law toolbox while facing the ongoing democratic backsliding in some member states. From 2018 to 2021, she co-designed and launched New Urban Progress, a U.S.-German exchange project bringing young professionals and experts from both sides of the Atlantic into a conversation about sustainable and equitable cities.

As a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow this fall, she will combine her expertise in democracy research with the German-American dialogue. Based on her research experience within the European context, she will apply a similar analytical framework to explore the resilience pillars of American democracy. The focus lies on different levels of the political system: political culture, institutions, actors, and citizens. The results will deliver ideas for mutual learning and designing policy responses. Both the United States and Germany face important elections in the near future. Therefore, finding meaningful synergies to make our societies and democracies more resilient against illiberal populism and political polarization is crucial.