Marija Golubeva’s career spans the worlds of policymaking, academia and think-tank research.
After earning a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge, Golubeva taught Politics at Riga Stradins University and worked at the thinktank PROVIDUS, where she led public policy research on a range of topics. She later worked for the consultancy company ICF in Brussels and as an independent consultant for European institutions in the Western Balkans and Central Asia.
From 2018 to 2022, Marija Golubeva was a Member of the Latvian Parliament, and in 2021-22, as the Minister of Interior, she was responsible for home affairs and migration policy. She is the founder of crisis simulation startup Meleys and of the think tank Baltic Initiative on European Reform. She is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Center of European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
In 2025, Marija Golubeva was awarded the Henrik Enderlein Fellowship by Hertie School (Berlin), to conduct research on European policy response to hybrid threats.