Dr. Renata Mustafina is a law and society scholar with research interests in authoritarian legality, legal mobilization, and defense lawyering in repressive settings, as well as in critical approaches to human rights. Her book manuscript, tentatively titled “Against Impossible Odds: Defensive Legal Mobilization in Russian Protest-Related Prosecutions,” ethnographically studies the legal aftermath of opposition protests in pre-war Russia. It explores the inventiveness of actors with little room for maneuver—both laypeople and legal professionals (defendants, lawyers, human rights activists)—as they navigate this repressive legality in the square, police buses, police precincts, courtrooms, and beyond. Mustafina’s other research, based on the study of a legal archive (a protest-related criminal case file), examines the production of legal truth by the prosecution. During her fellowship, she will also start a new research project dealing with the global governance of political prisoners. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Sciences Po, an M.A. in Sociology from École Normale Supérieure, and an undergraduate degree in International Relations from Moscow State University.