Milena Nikolova is a Rosalind Franklin Associate Professor at the University of Groningen.

Before joining the University of Groningen, Milena was a Research Associate at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), where she is now a Research Fellow. Nikolova is also a Non-resident Fellow at Bruegel and the Brookings Institution and a Fellow at the Global Labor Organization. Milena's work has appeared in leading peer-reviewed journals such as World Development, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the Journal of Business Venturing, and the Journal of Population Economics.

Milena is a Co-Editor (Economics) of the Journal of Happiness Studies and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Population Economics and the International Review of Economics. She is also Section Editor for the Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics.

Milena holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Maryland, College Park (2014).