Dr. Maria Petrova

Dr. Maria A. Petrova is the program manager of the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Coasts and Communities transdisciplinary program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Prior, Dr. Petrova was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. While there, she conducted an extensive literature review on the public perceptions of wind energy, which was published in 2013 by Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, NIMBYism revisited: public acceptance of wind energy in the United States. She was invited to brief the Massachusetts Undersecretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs on best practices for successful siting of wind energy installations. Petrova is an Associate of Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and has taught at the Fulbright International Summer Institute in Bulgaria. She conducts research in Europe and the United States, which focuses on understanding motivations for adopting green energy technologies among companies, policy makers, and the general public. Petrova earned a PhD in Environmental Science from Oregon State University, an MA in Marketing, Advertising and PR from the University of Sheffield in Greece, and a BA in Business Administration and Southeastern European Studies from the American University in Bulgaria.