She received her PhD in political science from the University of Toronto in 2007 and held a SSHRC post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law in 2007–2009. Her research interests include comparative democratization, social movements, political behavior, and youth, with a regional focus on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In her first book, Citizens in the Making in Post-Soviet States, she examined political attitudes of adolescents in Russia and Ukraine. Her second book project focuses on nonviolent youth movements in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Serbia, and Ukraine. Her publications also include articles in Canadian Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Europe-Asia Studies, International Political Science Review, Youth and Society, and other journals.