Marlène Agnès Laruelle

Marlene Laruelle is Full Professor of History in the Department of Political Science at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome. She previously served at The George Washington University as Research Professor and directed the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES). She holds a Ph.D. in History from the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Cultures (INALCO, Paris) and an habilitation in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris. She leads the Illiberalism Studies Program, a pioneering transatlantic research program dedicated to analyzing illiberalism as a global ideological phenomenon.

Trained as a historian of ideas, her early research focused on post-Soviet Central Asia and Russia, examining nation-building processes, regional geopolitics vis-à-vis Russia and China, labor migration dynamics, and the intellectual and ideological foundations of Putin’s regime, including nationalism, conservatism, and evolving state narratives of sovereignty and identity.She also developed a research program on environmental thought and the Russian Arctic, studying how infrastructure, climate change, and territorial imaginaries shape political worldviews. Over time, her scholarship has shifted toward conceptual history and global comparative analysis, focusing on the intellectual and political challenges confronting liberalism and the emergence of competing normative alternatives to the liberal order.

She has held numerous international fellowships and visiting appointments, including at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Vienna), the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, SAIS–Johns Hopkins, etc. She is the author or editor of more than twenty books published with major academic presses including Oxford, Cornell, Stanford, Cambridge and Johns Hopkins University Presses, among others. Her articles have appeared in leading journals such as Journal of Democracy, Survival, Nationalities Papers, Post-Soviet Affairs, Europe-Asia Studies, East European Politics, as well as in prominent policy outlets including The Washington Quarterly, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Le Monde, Le Grand Continent, Le Monde Diplomatique, etc.