Biography
Dr. Cynthia M. Horne is a Professor of Political Science at Western Washington University. She is the Associate Editor of two journals: Women’s Studies International Forum and East European Politics and Societies. Her primary research areas focus on transitional justice measures, political economy issues and democratization efforts in the post-communist sphere. Her book Building Trust and Democracy: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Countries (Oxford University Press, 2017) and her edited volume Transitional Justice and the Former Soviet Union: Reviewing the Past, Looking Toward the Future (Cambridge University Press, 2018, with Lavinia Stan) explore the impact and/or absence of transitional justice on democratization and trust-building. Her research appears in peer-reviewed journals, such as the International Journal of Transitional Justice, Comparative Political Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, Law & Social Inquiry, and Europe-Asia Studies, to name a few. Her specialty is the impact of lustration and vetting on trust-building, corruption, and democratization. In 2024-2025, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the Institute of Social and Political Sciences at Corvinus University of Budapest. She has been a visiting research fellow at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies (2020), the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam (2019), the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (2018), the Center for the Study of Democracy in Bulgaria (2012), the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy, and the Budapest Collegium in Hungary. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington, a Master’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and a B.A. from Dartmouth College. Prior to receiving her Ph.D., Dr. Horne worked in the field of economic and political reforms focused on the transitions in post-communist countries in the Former Soviet Union.
