Maria Popova is Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University and Director of the Jean Monnet Center Montreal. She held the Jean Monnet Chair “Europe and the Rule of Law” in 2017-2021. Her research focuses on democracy, rule of law, and (anti)corruption in Eastern Europe. Her award-winning book Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies: A Study of Courts in Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge University Press, 2012) examines the use of the law to manipulate elections and control the media and the obstacles to judicial independence in Russia and Ukraine in the late-1990s-early 2000s. Her new book, Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States (co-authored with Oxana Shevel and out from Polity Press in 2024) examines the root causes of the Russo-Ukrainian war and argues that gradual regime and identity divergence between Russia and Ukraine rather than NATO expansion explain Russia’s post-2014 military aggression against Ukraine. Her recent and ongoing research focuses on judicial reform in Ukraine, rule of law and protest, the politics of corruption prosecutions in Eastern Europe, and the conceptualization and measurement of the political weaponization of law.