Maria Chiara Franceschelli is a PhD candidate in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore, and a member of the Center on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS). During her PhD, she held a visiting position at the Johan Skytte Institute for Political Studies of the University of Tartu under the supervision of Prof. Viacheslav Morozov. She is also engaged in the INREES network coordinated by the Aleksanteri Institute (University of Helsinki).

Her research interests lie in the field of political sociology and social movements in post-Soviet space. She is currently researching the entrenchment of environmentalism, federalism, and colonialism in post-Soviet Russia. Specifically, her PhD project aims to explore the frames, repertoires, and discursive patterns of environmental mobilisation in the Russian Arctic and Siberia. Her research is supervised by Prof. Andrea L. P. Pirro and Prof. Donatella della Porta.

Maria Chiara holds a MA cum laude in Comparative Politics of Eurasia from the Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg, where she researched strategies of non-contentious environmental participation in contemporary Russia, and a BA in Intercultural and Linguistic Mediation from the University of Bologna. She is determined to make academic research accessible to the general public and often engages in knowledge dissemination, cooperating regularly with Italian and international magazines, newspapers, publishing houses and other media outlets.

Research interests: social movements, environmentalism, coloniality, authoritarianism, and post-Soviet space