I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Criminology, Law & Society at UC Irvine, and I anticipate graduating in May 2025. My research focuses on the intricacies of cannabis legalization in California. The results of my statistical analysis have recently been published in Law & Social Inquiry. Moreover, from 2021 to 2024, I conducted 97 interviews with active cannabis businesses, black-market participants, social equity applicants, cannabis attorneys, social activists, city officials, and representatives of licensing agencies. In addition to the interview data, I observed professional cannabis events and city council meetings where cannabis regulation was discussed. This analysis resulted in two papers that are currently in progress—one analyzing the costs of legality and the other examining its benefits. My research has been supported by several competitive grants, including the NSF’s Law & Science Dissertation Improvement Grant ($12,300) and the Haynes Lindley Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship ($28,600).
I was born in a small provincial town near Moscow in 1986. I graduated in Sociology from Lomonosov Moscow State University (BA, 2008) and the European University in St. Petersburg (MA, 2009), both with distinction. In 2014, I earned a Ph.D. in Sociology at the Higher School of Economics. While working on my dissertation, I spent the 2011-12 academic year as a Fulbright visiting scholar at Boston University.
Between 2012 and 2018, I worked as a researcher at the Institute for the Rule of Law, a think tank focused on socio-legal studies, where my research concentrated on various aspects of the Russian criminal justice system. The culmination of my research was the co-authored book Being a Lawyer in Russia: A Sociological Study of the Legal Profession (2016), which examines the professional autonomy of Russian defense counsels inside and outside the profession. I also published several peer-reviewed articles in Russian and English, prepared analytical reports, and participated in an international project on legal professions worldwide (Lawyers in 21st-Century Societies, ed. by Richard Abel et al.). In 2018, I received the George F. Kennan Fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars to conduct an individual project devoted to the ongoing reform of the Russian legal profession.
When Russia launched a full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022, I became a volunteer with the nonprofit Nova Ukraine. Currently, I am coordinating two projects that assist newly arrived Ukrainian war refugees in the United States.
I have an Italian husband and an 11-year-old daughter. We are an international family speaking three languages at home (Russian, Italian, and English).
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