After obtaining a degree from the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, she emigrated to Canada in 1991. She then earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto. Between 2001 and 2003 she taught at Dalhousie University in Halifax, while from 2006 to 2008 she taught at Concordia University in Montreal. Stan is a Professor of Political Science at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia.

She served as Vice-President and then President of the Society for Romanian Studies, the premier international organization on Romanian Studies, in 2010-2014 and 2014-2019, respectively, in which capacity she launched two key publication venues in the field of Romanian Studies: a book series sponsored jointly by the SRS and the largest academic publisher in Romania, Polirom, and the peer-reviewed Journal of Romanian Studies. Stan was also a member of the Scientific Committee of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of Romanian Exile in Bucharest (2010-2012), and a member of the editorial or advisory boards of some twenty scholarly journals published in North America and Europe, including Human Rights Review. She has been a member of the Club of Rome since 2009, and the Editor-in-Chief of peer-reviewed Women's Studies International Forum since January 2023 and Co-Editor-in-Chief of peer-reviewed East European Politics and Societies since December 2023. In addition, she has served as an expert witness in a number of cases on deportation and asylum, as well as property restitution and corruption, in American and British courts.

Lavinia Stan's publications have dealt with three major themes: transitional justice, religion and politics, and democratization broadly conceived, with a focus on post-communist Eastern Europe. She is renowned for her work on religion and politics in post-communist Romania, which argues that the majority Orthodox Church must be reigned in, if democracy is to be consolidated. Her work on transitional justice in post-communist countries has also gained wide recognition for her attention to the way in which civil society actors, even "political entrepreneurs" working in isolation from others, can advance reckoning in countries where state actors are unwilling to do so. Stan is one of the foremost scholars in Romanian Studies, having helped consolidate the field internationally.

She has authored, co-authored or edited the following volumes:

• Transitional Justice
  • Transitional Justice and the Former Soviet Union: Reviewing the Past, Looking toward the Future. Cambridge University Press, 2018. ISBN 1107198135. Co-edited with Cynthia M. Horne.
  • Post-Communist Transitional Justice: Lessons from Twenty-Five Years of Experience. Cambridge University Press, 2015. ISBN 1107065569. Co-edited with Nadya Nedelsky.
  • Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice. Cambridge University Press, 2013. ISBN 9780521196277. Co-edited with Nadya Nedelsky.
  • Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania: The Politics of Memory. Cambridge University Press, 2013. ISBN 9781107020535.
  • Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Reckoning with the Communist Past. Routledge, 2009. ISBN 978-0-415-59041-9. Romanian translation: Prezentul trecutului recent: Lustrație și decomunizare în postcomunism. Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2010. ISBN 978-973-669-956-6.

• Religion and Politics
  • Churches, Memory and Justice in Post-Communism. Springer, 2021. ISBN 978-3-030-56063-8. Co-edited with L. Turcescu.
  • Church Reckoning with Communism in Post-1989 Romania. Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. ISBN 978-1498580274. Co-edited with L. Turcescu.
  • Justice, Memory and Redress in Romania: New Insights. Cambridge Scholars, 2017. ISBN 978-1-4438-3152-9. Co-edited with L. Turcescu.
  • Church, State and Democracy in Expanding Europe. Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-19-533710-5. Co-authored with L. Turcescu.
  • Religion and Politics in Post-communist Romania. Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-19-530853-0. Romanian translation: Religie si politica in Romania postcomunista. Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2010. ISBN 978-973-669-966-5. Co-authored with L. Turcescu.

• Democratization
  • Post-Communist Romania at 35: Civic and Uncivic Values and Institutions. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. ISBN 1498501117. Co-edited with Diane Vancea.
  • 1989-2009: Incredibila aventura a democratiei dupa comunism (interviews with Western and Romanian specialists on Eastern Europe on the occasion of 20 years since the collapse of communism). Iași, Romania: Editura Institutul European, 2010. ISBN 978-973-611-657-5.
  • Leaders and Laggards: Governance, Civicness and Ethnicity in Post-Communist Romania. Columbia University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-88033-513-3.
  • Romania in Transition. Dartmouth College Press, 1997. ISBN 978-1-85521-886-4.

In addition, Stan translated two volumes into Romanian:

• Étienne de la Boetie, De la Servitude Volontaire, trans. with Sabina Elena Stan. Bucharest: Universal Dalsi Press, 1994.
• Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, trans. with Lucian Turcescu, Bucharest: Universal Dalsi Press, 1995.

From 1997 to 2003 she published the quarterly report on the Republic of Moldova in East European Constitutional Review, while since 2006 she has co-authored the annual report regarding political developments in Romania for European Journal of Political Research.

• Faculty website at St. Francis Xavier University
• Personal blog
• Academia.edu page of Lavinia Stan
• Getcited.org page of Lavinia Stan Archived 9 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine