Renata Mustafina
Post-doctoral Associate and Lecturer
Renata Mustafina is a PhD candidate in comparative political sociology at Sciences Po in Paris and a Postgraduate Associate at the MacMillan Center at Yale. She is interested in legal and human rights mobilizations in situations of politicized justice in both democratic and authoritarian contexts. She has done extended field research, combining ethnography of courtrooms and in-depth interviews with defense actors - criminal defense attorneys, human rights lawyers, human rights defenders, journalists, experts, activists. She argues that the defense actors are relevant and do have a room for maneuver even in politicized trials, despite the commonly perceived near-certainty of their outcomes. This research addresses these actors’ inventiveness in the situation of their structural weakness, their legal and extra-legal repertoire to face the repressive moves of law enforcement bodies.
Acad Year (Current):
2020-21
Program:
Program in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies