Marina Zaloznaya

Marina Zaloznaya is Associate Professor of Criminology at Arizona State University and a leading scholar of corruption, law, and authoritarianism in post-communist and Global South contexts. She is also a co-founding director of the Corruption in the Global South Research Consortium, which promotes interdisciplinary research on corruption in developing and transitional states. Prior to joining ASU, Dr. Zaloznaya served as an Associate Professor Sociology and Political Science at the University of Iowa, where she was also the Director of the European Studies Group. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University and an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In her research, Dr. Zaloznaya uses ethnographic, survey, and comparative-historical methods to investigate the political dimensions of the corruption markets, especially in non-democratic and transitional societies. Her first book, The Politics of Bureaucratic Corruption (Cambridge University Press, 2017), compares the impact of the distinct trajectories of democratization on bribery in Ukrainian and Belarusian universities. Zaloznaya's work has been published in top academic journals such as Criminology, Social Forces, Annual Review of Sociology, and Post-Soviet Affairs. Her new books, Comparative-Historical Sociology of Corruption (with M. Garrido and N.H. Wilson) and Bribes, People, and Politics (with W.M. Reisinger) are forthcoming with Cambridge University Press and Michigan University Press in 2026).

Dr. Zaloznaya teaches courses on White-Collar Crime, Organized Crime, Global Criminology, Law & Society, Comparative-Historical Methods, and other topics. 

Currently, Dr. Zaloznaya serves as an Associate Editor for Journal of Financial Crime and Journal of Money Laundering Control.