Maria’s work throughout the years consists in supporting, documenting and assisting reform initiatives through research and capacity-building in areas related to judicial independence, public administration reform, constitutional reform, human rights and quality of regulatory systems and legislation. She has actively worked in more than 20 countries in Southern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.
She holds a degree in law (University of Athens), a post-graduate degree in comparative social security law (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) and a PhD in law and legislative studies (University of London). She has a broad specialisation in different aspects of legislating and quality of legislation, having followed specialised courses on regulatory impact assessments (College of Europe), Legislative Drafting (Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London) and having worked extensively on projects aiming to make legislation simpler and more accessible, introduce evidence-based methods in legislating and reduce bureaucracy-related costs. Her doctoral research focused on the effectiveness of legislation and the ways in which it can be promoted, particularly with regard to human rights legislation.
Maria is a lawyer called before the Bar of Athens since 2000 and served as Research Associate to the (late) Member of European Parliament Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dimitris Th. Tsatsos (2002-2004). She has been cooperating with the Centre for European Constitutional Law since 1999, having worked there as project manager (1999-2002), as Director of International Projects (2002-2007) and as Executive Director (2007- today).