AGI News
Maria Skora, AGSR Fellow
AICGS
Maria Skóra
Das Progressive Zentrum
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.
AGI is pleased to welcome Maria Skora as an AGI/GMF Fellow with the American-German Situation Room in Washington, DC, in February 2019.
Maria Skora is Senior Project Manager at Das Progressive Zentrum, an independent think tank based in Berlin. She is responsible for developing the expertise in topics related to Central and Eastern Europe, transatlantic relations, and structural change.
While a fellow at the American-German Situation Room, Maria will pursue a comparative, policy-oriented analysis focused on the models of inclusive growth in the context of technological advancement. Her interest focuses on restructuring processes due to deindustrialization (e.g., in former coal mining areas or industrial heartlands, like the “Manufacturing Belt”) or developing innovative economic paths of reindustrialization and socio-economic revival through modern technologies (e.g., in start-up hubs or smart cities, like Columbus, OH, Kansas City, MO, Pittsburgh, PA). She will research both on challenges as well as good practice examples of successful models for creating jobs and enhancing social cohesion. This study visit will equip her with material necessary for comparing mirroring social and economic trends at the macro level in Germany and the United States (such as the emergence of digital economy or decarbonization of economy). Simultaneously, it will also allow for identifying examples of successful federal and regional policies for overcoming structural change launched on both sides of the Atlantic and map social, political, and economic stakeholders in both countries playing a pivotal role in steering the fourth industrial revolution.
