Initially graduating in politics, Cerian was called to the Bar in 2007 and went on to work for a number of prosecution agencies including the Serious Fraud Agency and the Financial Services Authority. Cerian also lectured within the University of London before taking up a lecturing position in law at the University of Warsaw.

Cerian’s main interests lie in all aspects of criminal law, evidence and trial procedure in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In particular, her research project concerns the prosecution of fraud from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century.