Petia Kostadinova
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pkostad.bsky.social
Petia Kostadinova
@pkostad.bsky.social
Associate Professor; Political Science; University of Illinois at Chicago; www.petiakostadinova.net.

European Union; democracy; post-communist countries; Bulgaria.

Posts about research, gardening, good food; parenting fails/wins, and youth travel hockey
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
👀 Check out this special issue of #BJPIR - European responses to the Russia-Ukraine War - Volume 27, Issue 4 (November 2025)

🔗 buff.ly/0uENSms

@polstudiesassoc.bsky.social
October 31, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
NEW: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Indian oil companies are reportedly significantly reducing direct purchases of Russian oil in the short term, and the European Union (EU) passed its 19th sanctions package against Russia, primarily targeting the Russian energy sector. 🧵(1/8)

October 24, 2025 at 2:17 AM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
Notre Dame is investing in democracy research in lots of exciting ways, including these hires. Happy to talk to senior folks about working at Notre Dame and living in South Bend. (Spoiler: There are lots of good reasons I've spent my entire career here).
Notre Dame’s Department of Political Science is hiring *multiple* senior folks (assoc/full prof) working on democracy broadly (institutions, political behavior, CP, AP).

I’m not on the committee (hiding on research leave), but I'm happy to chat / answer questions!

👉 apply.interfolio.com/172986
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com
September 2, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
This is bad
August 29, 2025 at 10:30 AM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
👇🎯 As with university presidents, the Democrats' current Congressional leaders have spent their entire career advancing & being selected for leadership positions based on qualities/skills that were rewarded in a political system that simply no longer exists in the United States of America.
Once again: the military takeover of U.S. cities is not a distraction from the thing, it is the the thing
Jeffries on Trump planning a military crackdown in Chicago: "We should continue to support local law enforcement and not simply allow Donald Trump to play games with the lives of the American people as part of his effort to manufacture a crisis and create a distraction because he's deeply unpopular"
August 24, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
The excuses Westerners make for Ru society’s consistent/broad support for the attempted conquest of Ukraine are endless! After « they don’t know the truth » and « they are afraid of repression », we now have « they have to make a living ».
August 24, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
US higher ed basically started to copy the German research-university model in the early 20th century. Then Germany tore it down themselves.

Not unrelated, one reason Germany lost the race for the A-bomb is that Hitler thought theoretical physics was essentially Jewish
How will Trump’s attacks affect higher education?

Let’s look to history

Germany's universities were the world's premier research institutions

Hitler destroyed them

How long did they take to recover?

They haven’t
August 10, 2025 at 11:46 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
PLEASE GIVE ME MORE WACKY DATA! Crazy questions make memorable examples! My students will thank you!

buff.ly/a3hUOBA

Speeding tickets! Cookie consumption! Feeling thermometers about cats and dogs and people who eat anchovies straight from the tin!
More Random Data!
More random data questions for student analysis - focusing on continuous/numerical variables this time.
buff.ly
August 8, 2025 at 8:20 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
Here are 10 essential reads on African politics for this summer.

From cultural revival to election campaign violence, these books offer a rich dive into how politics works – and who it works for across Africa.

goodauthority.org/news/10-esse...
10 essential reads on African politics for summer 2025.
From cultural revival to election campaign violence, these books offer a rich dive into how politics works – and who it works for across Africa.
goodauthority.org
July 22, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
I like that the NYT story on Mamdani's college application is sparking dialogue on how race is a political expression. ~100 years ago, Minnesota expelled Finnish labor organizers by declaring them Asian and Alabama let a Black man marry a Sicilian woman because Italians weren't "White."
July 6, 2025 at 2:18 AM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
We Should Have Finished Reconstruction: A Brief History Of American Democracy, 1865-2025
July 4, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
There’s not one rule that says you can’t use kittens
July 2, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
We're also going to find out that RFE/RL, USAID and the rest of the American soft-power apparatus was also load-bearing.

It turns out a radio station is a lot cheaper than if you have to intervene to fight a war or control refugee flows.

A *lot* of this stuff is load-bearing.
July 1, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
The US Supreme Court rules that there is no law and there is no constitution
BREAKING: The US Supreme Court lifts limits on deporting migrants to countries not their own
June 23, 2025 at 9:15 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
Flattened cities, millions of people burnt to death, and yet more tortured by radioactive fallout. That harrowing future may seem outlandish to some, but only because no nation has detonated a nuclear weapon in conflict since 1945.

Our 2023 story on if old nukes would actually work.
No One Knows If Decades-Old Nukes Would Actually Work
Atomic weapons are highly complex, surprisingly sensitive, and often pretty old. With testing banned, countries have to rely on good maintenance and simulations to trust their weapons work.
www.wired.com
June 22, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
Wild how the Fed chair saying that *entire regions of the United States* won’t be able to get a mortgage in the next decade barely registered as a news event
June 18, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
Assassin was Trump voter
June 15, 2025 at 1:35 AM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
No Kings protest sign with a Ukrainian flavor
June 15, 2025 at 1:21 AM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
Donald Trump does NOT want you to share this footage of his pathetically tiny birthday parade crowd.
June 14, 2025 at 10:28 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
Chicago is showing up.
June 14, 2025 at 5:23 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
I once confronted then-Rep Keith Ellison at an event in '16, and asked if he understood that Democrats ideally want to work with Republicans, but Republicans ideally want to jail Democrats. His quick reply was "brother, don't I know it, you have to convince Chuck Schumer, I've tried"
February 13, 2024 at 9:32 PM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
Find your closest rally on Saturday and go. You can tell your kids where you were on the other side of this. Outnumber him everywhere.

www.nokings.org#map
No Kings
On June 14—Flag Day—Donald Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday. A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn’t staged in Washington. ...
www.nokings.org
June 11, 2025 at 2:01 AM
Reposted by Petia Kostadinova
LAPD fired rubber bullets at Australian journalist @laurentomasi.bsky.social
June 9, 2025 at 1:39 AM