Maria Rubins was born in Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), and studied in Russia and the United States, with a brief interlude at Charles University in Prague. After earning her doctoral degree, she lived in Boston, New York, Houston, and Washington, and taught Russian literature, culture and language at various American universities. In 2004, she moved to Europe and joined UCL's School of Slavonic and East European Studies.
Dr. Rubins is Associate Member of the Centre d’Etudes sur la Russie, le Caucase et l’Europe Centrale of CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and of Institut d’Etudes Slaves (France).
She is Editor of the BRILL book series “Studies in Slavic literature and Poetics” and member of the editorial boards of the FRINGE series of UCL Press, Slavonic and East European Review (U.K.), The New Review (USA), and Filologicheskie nauki (Russia).
In addition to academic research and teaching she also works as a literary translator from English and French into Russian, and has edited and translated novels and short stories of Irène Némirovsky and Arnaud Delalande, and memoirs of Elizabeth Gaskell, Judith Gautier, Vasily Yanovsky, Helen Izwolsky, and others.
Dr. Rubins has been the recipient of grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Kennan Institute (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars), the British Academy, Future of Russia/Rothschild Foundation, and other institutions.