Martin K. Dimitrov

Martin K. Dimitrov is a Professor and Department Chair of Political Science at Tulane University. His research focuses on authoritarian regimes, particularly their resilience and adaptability in China, Eastern Europe, and Cuba. He holds affiliations with Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and serves as an associate editor for journals like Problems of Post-Communism and Journal of Asian Studies.

He earned his PhD from Stanford University in 2004 and has held fellowships at institutions including Harvard, Princeton, and the Woodrow Wilson Center. His work has been supported by grants from the SSRC, AAS, and Louisiana’s ATLAS Program. Notable awards include the Berlin Prize (2012) and Tulane’s President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2020).

His research interests span communist regime resilience, state-society dynamics, and the political economy of China. Recent projects include Welfare Dictatorships and an edited volume on China-Cuba relations. He has conducted fieldwork across Bulgaria, China, Cuba, and Eastern Europe.

Teaching includes courses on authoritarianism, Chinese politics, and qualitative methods. His work bridges historical comparative analysis and contemporary authoritarian governance, emphasizing mechanisms of regime survival and public opinion dynamics in non-democratic contexts.