Maria Krause is an independent election expert from Bucharest, Romania. She has been participating in international election observation since 2005, with the OSCE/ODIHR in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, the Republic of Moldova, Latvia, Bulgaria and Ukraine, with the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations in Georgia, and with the Carter Center in Nepal, Mozambique and Guyana. In her home country, she has worked as election expert and observer coordinator for the Bucharest-based think tank Expert Forum and for the Civic Resource Center. She has a degree in English and German language and literature and her areas of interest are elections, human rights, democratization and good governance.