Maria Chiara Franceschelli is a researcher and analyst working on environmental governance, political participation and social movements in authoritarian and/or pressured contexts, with additional expertise on Eastern Europe and Russia. She holds a PhD cum laude in Political Science and Sociology from Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence, Italy), where she researched environmental governance and collective action in Russia’s peripheral regions. She regularly works with think tanks and institutions, striving to connect policy and research. She firmly believes in universal access to specialised knowledge and consistently engages in the dissemination of scientific research to general audiences in Italian and international media.