Karolina is a first year Master’s student at CERES. She is also the National Security Fellow at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), where she leads research efforts examining the Russian occupation of Ukraine. Her work examines proxy administrative systems, forced passportization campaigns, and the forced transfer/deportation of Ukrainian children, drawing on extensive open-source intelligence collection and war crimes documentation. A native of Boulder, Colorado, she graduated from George Washington University in 2021 with a BA in International Affairs, concentrating in international security, international law, and gender analysis.
Since graduating, Karolina has built a body of work that bridges rigorous research with real-world accountability efforts. She has authored over 80 weekly Russian Occupation Updates and appeared as a lead writer or editor on nearly 600 daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessments since 2022. Her analysis has been cited by the Washington Post, Reuters, TIME, Bellingcat, NPR, and others, and her research has fed into various international accountability processes. She is also a graduate of the Hertog War Studies Program.
Karolina is pursuing her master’s degree to continue developing a deeper, more rigorous understanding of Russian occupation policy — both as a practitioner tracking these dynamics in real time and as a scholar situating them within broader frameworks of international law, security studies, and post-conflict governance. She sees graduate study as a way to sharpen the analytical tools she brings to her work at ISW while contributing to the long-term project of documenting and understanding how occupying powers consolidate control over the populations they occupy.