Maria Varaki is a Greek lawyer and has recently been appointed Assistant Professor in International Law at Kadir Has University, Faculty of Law in Istanbul. Before joining Kadir Has University, she was a post-doctoral at the Law Faculty of Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a visiting fellow at the iCourts Centre of the University of Copenhagen. 

She holds a PhD in International Criminal Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway, Ireland and two LLM degrees in International and Comparative Law, one from Tulane University, School of Law and one from New York University, School of Law. Additionally, she has worked for the OHCHR in Geneva, the UNHCR in New York and for the Legal Advisory section of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Her current research interests focus on legal theory about the principle of legitimacy, international responsibility with regard to refugee law, international courts and tribunals and the evolution of International Law during the Cold War.