Maria Ivanova, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Center for Governance and Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is also a visiting scholar at the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT.

Dr. Ivanova appeared July 14, 2020 on SftPublic's Contemporary Science program with her doctoral student Candace Famiglietti to discuss A Spotlight on the Impact of the Wildlife Trade, the topic of their recent article in The Conversation.

Dr. Ivanova's work focuses on the performance of international institutions, implementation of international environmental agreements, and sustainability. She has been studying the United Nations Environment Programme and her biography of UNEP, A Revisionist History of the World’s Leading Environmental Institution: UNEP at Fifty, will be published by MIT Press in early 2021. Her current work examines national performance on global environmental conventions. Her academic work is informed by and informs policy at the national and international level.

From 2014 to 2018, Maria Ivanova served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. She was a coordinating lead author for the policy chapter of the fifth Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-5). She is the Chair of the Board of UN University’s Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. In 2018, she chaired the jury for the $5 million New Shape Prize for global governance by the Global Challenges Foundation.

Maria Ivanova and Candace Famiglietti Python skin jackets and elephant leather boots: How wealthy Western nations help drive the global wildlife trade , (The Conversation , June 2020)