She is a graduate of the College of Interdepartmental Individual Studies in Humanities at the University of Warsaw. Nalepa received her master’s degree at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Warsaw in 1999 and obtained her PhD degree at Columbia University in New York in 2005. She subsequently worked as an assistant professor at Rice University and at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana), and after that as an associate professor of political science, first at Notre Dame and then at the University of Chicago. She also received prestigious fellowships at Harvard University (The Harvard Academy) and Princeton University (Center for the Study of Democratic Politics). She is an author of almost 50 publications, including articles in Decyzje, Przegląd Filozoficzny, Przegląd Humanistyczny, ResPublica as well as in World Politics, The Journal of Comparative Politics, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Perspectives on Politics and Journal of Conflict Resolution. Her first book, Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe, received the Best Book award from the Comparative Democratization section of the American Political Science Association, and the Leon Epstein Outstanding Book Award. Monika Nalepa’s research concentrates on the application of formal theory to comparative politics, with special focus on transitional justice and democratic institutions such as legislature, as well as voting and party systems.

At present she is completing a project concerning transitional justice in a global scope. The project is financed by the National Science Foundation (US).