Dr Sarvar Gurbanov is Assistant Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs. His areas of expertise are energy economics; education economics; energy governance; entrepreneurship; Dutch disease; brain drain and migration; decarbonisation of energy resources and geopolitical vulnerabilities; as well as the Middle Income Trap.

Contact: sgurbanov@ada.edu.az

Dr Rashad Ibadov is Assistant Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs. He is specialised in issues of identity and citizenship, modern societies and neutrality, law and religion, as well as EU institutional law.

Contact: ribadov@ada.edu.az

Dr Orkhan Ismayilov is based at the School of Public and International Affairs. His research interests include the relationship between natural disasters and the economy; Green jobs and growth of green jobs after natural disasters; local government cooperation for green job creation in the United States; Institutional Collective Framework; local governments and countries in post- Soviet countries.

Contact: oismayilov@ada.edu.az

Dr Ali Saqer is Assistant Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs. His areas of expertise include international political economy, global benchmarking, competitiveness and public policy.

Contact: asaqer@ada.edu.az

Ms Sabina Taghiyeva is an instructor at ADA University, School of Public and International Affairs. She teaches Sociology, Race, Gender, Ethnicity and Minority Relations courses. Sabina also works on consultancy projects for international institutions, including GIZ and UNDP, with a focus on sustainable development. Her research field is focused on inclusive society: sustainable development goals, intersectionality in policy development and analysis, identity and nation-building. Ms Taghiyeva holds a Master’s degree in International Relations (ADA University) and a Bachelor degree in Political Science (Baku State University). She speaks Azerbaijani, English Russian and French.

Contact: staghiyeva@ada.edu.az

Dr Muharrem Yesilirmak is Assistant Professor of Economics. He is specialised in governmental educational policies for primary and secondary school students; and the effect of government policies on inequality among students and average achievement.

Contact: myesilirmak@ada.edu.az

Dr Elena Babkina is Associate Professor at the Department of International Private and European Law. Her interests include Private International Law (Conflict of Laws), International Contract Law, International Family Law, International Civil Procedure, International Arbitration, Foreign Investments, and European Law.

Contact: babkina@bsu.by

Prof Aleksandr Baichorov is Professor at the Faculty of International Relations at BSU. His wide expertise covers international relations, Belarus’ foreign policy, international security, and China’s foreign policy.

Contact: baichor@bsu.by

Pavel Boltochko is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Customs Affairs. His research focuses on international law, the Eurasian Economic Union, and international trade.

Contact: Boltaachko@bsu.by

Denis Bukonkin is a PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Law. He works on areas of international relations, Belarus’ foreign policy, the Eurasian Economic Union, as well as the Belt and Road Initiative.

Contact: info@forsecurity.org

Alisa Dekhtiarenko is based in the Faculty of International Relations. Her research looks at dynamics of cooperation development between the Republic of Belarus and the Council of Europe.

Contact: alicedekhtiarenko@gmail.com

Dr Ekaterina Deykalo is Lecturer at the Department of International Law. Her areas of expertise include international law, law of international responsibility, theory and philosophy of international law

Contact: deikalo@bsu.by

Prof Aliaksandr Kakhanouski is Dean of the Faculty of History. His research interests are mainly focused around social and ethno-cultural history of Belarus and wider region of Central and Eastern Europe of XIX – XX centuries. Prof Kakhanouski furthermore examines problems linked to migration and its implications on social and political processes, as well as higher education development especially in the area of social sciences and humanities.

Contact: kohanovsky@bsu.by

Dr. Aliaksandra Kondral is Associate Professor at the Department of Modern and Contemporary History of the Belarusian State University. Her research interests include Islamic Studies as well as Modern and Contemporary history of Asia and Africa and Political situation in the Middle East. 

Contact: akondral87@gmail.com

Dr Alla Leukavets is an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Studies in Minsk, Belarus. After studying law at the Belarusian State Economics University, Alla pursued and MA programme in Human Rights at the University of Manchester. She received her second MA degree in EU international relations from the College of Europe and did a PhD in political science at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences. In addition, Alla Leukavets completed several traineeships, inter alia, at the European Parliament in Brussels and the UK Parliament in London. Her research interests included foreign policy of small states, Eurasion integration and EU democracy promotion in Eastern Partnership countries. Alla has published in, among other outlets, Ibidem Verlag, Caucasus Survey, Belarus Digest and Russion Analytical Digest.

Contact: a.leukavets@gmail.com;  Website: http://csfps.by/en/experts/Alla-Leukavets

Dr Olga Malashenkova is Vice-Dean for Research of the Faculty of International Relations. She is specialised in issues of economic and industrial development and state policies.

Contact: malashenkova@bsu.by

Elena Pilgun is Lecturer and PhD Candidate at the Faculty of International Relations. In her research she examines the phenomenon of the crisis discourse, looking at aspects of communicative technologies, and the general and specific ways of ideologization of the crisis discourse, using examples from English, French and Russian mass media.

Contact: pilgun@bsu.by

Dr Andrei Rusakovich is Associate Professor at the Department for International Relations. His expertise includes Belarus’ participation in integration projects in the post-Soviet space, in terms of economic, political and security spheres; relations between Belarus and Russia in the context of the Union State; the Eurasian Economic Union; European and Eurasian integration; and relations between Belarus and the European Union, notably Germany and Poland.

Contact: russav@bsu.by

Dr Alesya Sadovskaya is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations. Her areas of specialisation are European integration, EU foreign policy, and relations between Belarus and the EU.

Dr Andrei Selivanov is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations. His research assesses the United Nations, migration policies, refugee protection and asylum.

Contact: selivanych@bsu.by

Dr Aleksandr Tikhomirov is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations. He specialises in international relations, history of Belarus’ foreign policy, relations with EU and USA, Russian foreign policy, and Ukraine.

Contact: Tsikhamirau@bsu.by

Dr Roza Turarbekava is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Eurasian and European Studies. Her areas of expertise include the Eurasian Economic Union; political transition in Central Asia and regional policy; and the Islamic factor in politics in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Contact: turarbekova@bsu.by

Natalia Yurova is Associate Professor at the Department of International Economic Relations, working on issues of international economy.

Contact: yurova@bsu.by

Dr Stsiapan Zakharkevich is based in the Faculty of History. His research involves the the study of cultural adaptation of ethnic minorities, combining traditional methods of historical science with field methods of ethnology and cultural anthropology.

Contact: Zakharkevich@bsu.by

Dr Diana Kudaibergenova is an affiliate at the University of Cambridge. She studies different intersections of power relations through realms of political sociology dealing with concepts of state, nationalising regimes and ideologies.  Dr. Diana T. Kudaibergenova received her PhD in 2015 from the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Her first book, Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh literature (Lexington, 2017) deals with the study of nationalism, modernisation and cultural development in modern Kazakhstan. Her second based on her doctoral research focuses on the rise of nationalising regimes in post-Soviet space after 1991 with prime focus on power struggles among the political and cultural elites in democratic and non-democratic states (forthcoming with Pittsburgh University Press).

Contact:  creative.corazon@gmail.com

Dr Lorena Lombardozzi is an affiliate at the Central Asia Forum. Her work focuses on theoretical debates on political economy, inequality, growth and distribution as well as to applied areas of international development in Central Asia and post-Soviet countries, gender and feminist economics, labour, work and wellbeing, agro-industrial policy and innovation, food system and commodity value chains, and research methods in Economics.

Contact: lorena.lombardozzi@gmail.com

Sinead Mowlds is an affiliate at the Central Asia Forum. Her research interests include geopolitical and development identities of Central Asian countries; evaluation, monitoring, and implementation of effective development policies.

Contact: sinead.m.mowlds@gmail.com

Dr Anise Waljee is an affiliate at the Central Asia Forum. Her areas of expertise include organisational change and strategic planning in and for various NGOs in London, Lebanon and Pakistan; biodiversity and the permeating of local knowledge in conjunction with Central Asian academics, practitioners, and the local community.

Contact: anise.waljee@gmail.com

Prof Akiko Yamanaka is an affiliate at the Central Asia Forum. She is specialised in international peacebuilding, international negotiation and strategic studies, natural and human induced disaster prevention, as well as preventive diplomacy.

Contact: akikointheworld@gmail.com

Anna Ayvazyan is currently a researcher and a PhD candidate at the Department for European Integration, Institute of Europe, Russian Academy of Sciences.Her main academic interest is the EU external policy in the South Caucasus region, namely its normative component. She got her Diploma in Economics from the Russian-Armenian State University and her Master degree in European Studies: Ideas and Identities from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, being a Michael Peacock scholar and AGBU scholarship recipient. She also works for the Friedrich Naumann Foundation Moscow bureau as a project coordinator.

Contact: anna.ayvazyan@gmail.com

Mario Baumann is a PhD candidate at the Brussels School of International Studies and project affiliate in the School of Politics and International Relations at Kent. In his primary research, he focusses on the interaction of interpretations in Russia and the European Union. He is intrigued by competing narratives and perspectives on the world and their implications for international politics. In order to trace this kind of discursive interaction, Mario relies on discourse analysis within a post-structuralist framework. His dissertation project is supervised by Tom Casier and Elena Korosteleva.

Contact: mb997@kent.ac.uk

Dr Paul Hansbury is an associate fellow with the Minsk Dialogue Council on International Relations. His research considers the agency of states in eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia. He has a PhD in International Relations and an MSc in Russian and East European Studies, both from Oxford University. He is a contributor to Belarus Digest and an associate editor with the Journal of Belarusian Studies as well.

Dr Chris Henry is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Critical Thought and an Associate Lecturer at the Centre for English and World Languages. His research concerns philosophy, ontology and ethics, particularly in the work of Deleuze, Deleuze & Guattari, Badiou and Althusser; the ethical potential contained within the development of series’; naturalist ontology, political philosophy, scientific and mathematic reductionism.

Contact: C.M.Henry@kent.ac.uk

Dr Anisa Heritage is a Senior Lecturer at the Defence and International Affairs Department, Faculty for the Study of Leadership, Security and Warfare at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, UK.

Anisa is affiliated to GCRF COMPASS as a Visiting Research Fellow. Her current research into China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with her research partner, Pak K. Lee based at the University of Kent, focuses on China’s hegemonic order-building activities in Eurasia. Through their focus on China’s BRI, they are currently investigating whether cooperative orders and governance models are possible in this region in light of globally changing power dynamics.

Her areas of expertise include maritime and regional security in the Asia-Pacific, US-China relations, order-building and order contestation and transformation strategies, and hegemonic legitimation strategies in the Asia-Pacific primarily using an ontological security approach.

A co-authored book with Pak K. Lee, Chinese Hegemony and the Belt and Road lnitiative: Uncovering China’s Legitimation Strategy is due for publication with IB Tauris in March 2021. Our book project is partially funded by the GCRF COMPASS project and includes regional expertise input from GCRF COMPASS project partners in Central Asia.

Contact: anisaheritage@gmail.com

Dr Karolina Kluczewska is an Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Social and Anthropological Research, Tomsk State University (Russia); and a Research Associate at the Tajik National University (Tajikistan). Previously, she was a Maria Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews (UK); and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the GLOBALCONTEST project hosted by the centre CERAL, University of Paris 13 (France). Her research interests include development aid and issues of global governance in Central Asia, particularly in relation to migration and health.

Contact: karolinainwork@gmail.com

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Thomas Kruessmann LL.M. (King’s College) is co-ordinator of the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education Project “Modernisation of master programmes for future judges, prosecutors, investigators with respect to European standard on human rights” for Ukraine and Belarus with the University of Graz. As President of the Association of European Studies for the Caucasus, he devotes himself to European Studies in the wider Caucasus region, including by acting as series editor of the book series “European Studies in the Caucasus”. Prof. Kruessmann is a German-qualified lawyer with extensive legal practice in one of Vienna’s leading law firms. He is founding director of the Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies Centre at the University of Graz (2010-2015) and Visiting Professor at Kazan Federal University (2015-16). Beyond the Caucasus, his research interests extend to issues of comparative, European and international criminal law, gender and the law as well as corruption and compliance. He is chair of the Supervisory Board of Higher School of Jurisprudence / Higher School of Economics in Moscow and maintains close relations with a number of leading universities in Russia, Ukraine and Central Asia.

Contact: kruessmann.thomas@gmail.com

Dr Anastasiia Kudlenko specialises in European security, with the focus on Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Western Balkans. She holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) and International Master’s in Russian, Central and Eastern European Studies from the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include post-conflict state and peacebuilding, security sector reform, the EU and security governance. Her current research focuses on the role of informal networks in the governance of new security threats. She works as Project Coordinator of a large grant, funded by the European Research Council, at SOAS University of London. 

Contact:  anickss@gmail.com

Pavel Kuryan is a Belarusian and international lawyer. He holds LLB from the Belarusian State University and University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He has more than 10 years’ experience of working in the dispute resolution departments of leading international law firms in London. He is a member of the Belarusian International Committee, and is a former lecturer at the Presidential Academy of Sciences. Pavel specialises the legal and political developments of the CIS countries, including Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. Contact: pavel.kuryan@gmail.com

Dr Pak Lee is Senior Lecturer at the School of Politics and International Relations. His areas of specialisation are Chinese politics; Non-traditional security threats in China, with special emphasis on energy and contagious diseases; and China’s participation in global governance.

Contact: P.K.Lee@kent.ac.uk

Dr Zhouchen Mao is an Asia-Pacific Analyst at AKE International and a Teaching Fellow at SOAS

Contact: zhouchenmao@gmail.com

Dr Igor Merheim-Eyre is Head of Office and Advisor to Miriam Lexmann MEP, Foreign and security policy, EU external relations, Eastern Partnership, responsible for AFET, SEDE, Euronest and EP Delegation to Belarus, at the European Parliament. He is also a Research Fellow at the Global Europe Centre and the GCRF UKRI COMPASS project, and has previously worked in international democracy support.

Contact: igor.merheimeyre@europarl.europa.eu

Dr. Moritz Pieper is a Researcher in the Eastern Europe/Eurasia unit of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik). Before that, he worked as a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Salford, Manchester, UK. He holds a PhD from the University of Kent and has completed his postgraduate studies in Canterbury, Moscow, and Brussels. He was a visiting Research Fellow at China Foreign Affairs University (CFAU), Beijing, at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs’ (SWP) Brussels office, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London. He has published on Russian foreign policy, Russian-Western relations, and EU external relations. He is the author of ‘Hegemony and Resistance around the Iranian Nuclear Programme’ (Routledge, 2017) and is currently working on a new monograph on Sino-Russian interaction in Eurasia in the wake of the Belt and Road Initiative (contracted, I.B.Tauris).

Contact: moritz.pieper@swp-berlin.org

Prof Richard Sakwa is Professor of Russian and European Politics at the School of Politics and International Relations. His expertise includes democratic development in Russia; the nature of postcommunism; global challenges facing the former communist countries; and problems of European and global order.

Contact: R.Sakwa@kent.ac.uk

Dr Balihar Sanghera is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research. His research concerns the political economy of Eurasia, exploring how economic institutions and relationships intertwine with moral values and norms. His current research examines how global powers and associated international financial institutions shape and contest Central Asia.

Contact: b.s.sanghera@kent.ac.uk

Dr Elmira Satybaldieva is based at Conflict Analysis Research Centre. She specialises in politics in the post-Soviet space, with a particular focus on grassroots activism, political agency and informal mediation with state institutions in Central Asia. In addition, she has examined the role international donors in pursuing development and conflict prevention in Central Asia.

Contact: es455@kent.ac.uk

Dr Zachary Paikin is Senior Visiting Fellow at the Global Policy Institute and Senior Editor at Global Brief magazine. He is also a collaborator with the Network for Strategic Analysis (funded by the Canadian Ministry of National Defence) and an expert with the Cooperative Security Initiative, co-launched by GLOBSEC and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s Vienna office in collaboration with the OSCE. His research interests include Russian foreign policy, great power relations, international order and English School theory. He obtained his PhD in International Relations from the University of Kent in 2020.

Contact: z.paikin@gpilondon.com

Prof Dr Imomozoda Muhammadyusuf Saidali is the Rector of Tajik National University. His areas of expertise include the study of poetic problems, literary school processes, genre evolution, literary facets, literary research themes and conceptions, and the style of writing and their role in development of literature.

Prof Muzaffar Olimov is based at the Academy of Sciences and the SHARQ Research Centre. His expertise includes history, religion, ethnology, and security in Central and South Asia, as well as human capital and Islam in Tajikistan, and labour migration in the region.

Contact: olimov@tajik.net

Akmal Abdullaev is a Lecturer and PhD Candidate. His work looks at the contemporary history of Central Asia, including different movements in society.

Contact: abdullayev_akmal@mail.ru

Dr Gulnoza Ismailova is Vice-Rector of UWED. Dr Ismailova works on public administration, governance, local communities in Uzbekistan, electoral procedures, parliamentary studies, gender issues and corruption studies.

Contact: ismailova.dba@mail.ru

Dr Otabek Nayimov is Lecturer and Dean of the Master’s Department. His research areas include parliamentary oversight functions, and the role of the parliament as an instrument of foreign policy and inter-parliamentary cooperation in Central Asia.

Contact: ONayimov@uwed.uz

Nilufar Rakhmatullaeva is a PhD student at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy (Tashkent, Uzbekistan). Her research interest focuses on Central Asian studies in France. Prior to this, she taught at the International Relations faculty of the UWED and worked at the Office for International Cooperation of the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Contact: NRaxmatullayeva@uwed.uz

Prof Saidmukhtar Saidkasymov is specialised in Uzbekistan’s foreign policy, regional security issues, and Central Asian integration.

Contact: said@uwed.uz

Dr Gavxar Sultanova is a Docent of International Economic Relations who specialises in issues of world economy.

Contact: gsultanova@uwed.uz

Dr Surayyo Usmanova is Lecturer at UWED. Her research interests include tourism development, international law, and gender issues.

Contact: usmanovasurayyo22@gmail.com