Maria (Masha) Gratsova

Masha is a second year International Relations student at LSE. Her degree studies directly reflect her personality and experiences. While originally from the Russian minority in the tiny Baltic country of Estonia, she has mostly lived outside of Estonia and extensively travelled. The geography ranges from burning Africa in the south to freezing Finland in the north, from Ghana in the west to Central Asia in the east.

For the past several years, Masha did a lot for the good of people in smaller countries. She joined many international and charity organizations in an attempt to improve lives in Central Asian and African countries. Masha spent months volunteer teaching in Ghana, researched politics in Senegal, Gambia and Guinea, worked on media development and freedom of speech in Caucasian and Central Asian countries. Recently, Maria gave three weeks of her Christmas break to travel between Dakar and Senegal helping humanitarian organizations to work out the problem of illegal immigration.

Currently, Masha is a red belt in taekwondo and is involved in the Dance Society, Africa Forum and of course Russian LSE. As the Secretary of Russian LSE, she is in charge of the logistics, organization of other committee members and the point of contact for our members – so get writing if you have any queries, suggestions, comments or want to travel to Africa!