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Maria Todorova is Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A graduate of the University of Sofia, she previously taught at the Universities of Florida and Sofia, and has held visiting appointments at the Universities of Maryland- College Park, California-Irvine, Rice University, University of Graz (Austria), Harvard University, and Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. Her publications include Balkan Identities: Nation and Memory (2004), Imagining the Balkans (1997, translated in 11 languages), Balkan Family Structure and the European Pattern: Demographic Developments in Ottoman Bulgaria (1993), English Travelers‘ Accounts on the Balkans (16th—19th c.) (1987 and 2006), England, Russia, and the Tanzimat (1980 and 1983), Historians on History (1988), Selected Sources for Balkan History (1977), and other edited volumes, as well as numerous articles and essays on social and cultural history, historical demography, and historiography of the Balkans in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Her research revolves around problems of nationalism, especially the symbology of nationalism, national memory and national heroes, as well as the history of communism and postcommunism. Her awards include Fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1988, 1994—95), Fulbright Professorship (1989—90), Mellon Distinguished Professorship (1990—92), National Humanities Center Fellowship (2000), Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna, 2001), John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2001—02), Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2004—05), and Doctor Honoris Causa, Sofia University (2004) and the European University in Florence (2006).