Carna Pistan

Carna Pistan is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University (US) and Eurac research (Italy), and an Affiliated Research Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development (a partnership between the Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe and the University of Bologna, Italy). Previously, she was an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Legal Science, University of Udine (Italy), and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Comparative Public Law at the Department of Legal Science, University of Udine (2016-2019), and the Department of Legal Studies, University of Bologna (2010-2016).

Pistan obtained a Ph.D. in Constitutional Law from the University of Bologna after graduating in Political Science from the University of Trieste. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Birkbeck College of the University of London (2019); Harriman Institute at Columbia University (2016), and Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University (2013). She is the Coordinator of the Sub-Group on Eastern Europe and Eurasia of the International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL) Research Group on Constitutionalism in Illiberal Democracies. From 2013 to 2019 she was the Main Researcher for the project on “The Role of Constitutional Courts in the Challenges to Democratization and the Protection of Human Rights in Central Asia”, funded by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, LA.

She is the author of several book chapters and articles focusing on democratic transitions, comparative constitutional justice, hybrid regimes, illiberal constitutionalism, nationalism, collective memory and national identity, with particular reference to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union, and the author of the monograph “Between democracy and authoritarianism: experiences of constitutional justice in Central and Eastern Europe and Post-Soviet Union Countries” (Bononia University Press, 2015). In 2019 she obtained the National Scientific Qualification to become Associate Professor of Comparative Law. In 2020, she was awarded with the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship. Carna is currently interested in the emerging field of law and memory, and is working on the project on “Illusions of eternity: the Constitution as a lieu de mémoire and the problem of collective remembrance in the Western Balkans” as part of her Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship.