The State of Civil Society in Central Asia: Kazakhstan | Состояние Гражданского Общества в Центральной Азии: Казахстан

​Sebastien Peyrouse, Research Professor, Central Asia Program, IERES, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University

Sebastien Peyrouse, PhD, is a Research Professor at the Central Asia Program in the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (George Washington University) and a Senior Fellow with the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China relations. His main areas of expertise are political systems in Central Asia, economic and social issues, Islam and religious minorities, and Central Asia’s geopolitical positioning toward China, India and South Asia. 

Lisa Coll, President, Eurasia Foundation 

Lisa Coll is president of Eurasia Foundation. Prior to this role, she was vice president of EF’s Washington, DC office, where she was responsible for overseeing EF’s program portfolio and helping EF achieve its strategic goals. She has over 20 years of international development experience in the democracy and governance sector. Since 2001, Coll has played a key role at Eurasia Foundation, including guiding the localization of EF’s regional offices between 2004 and 2010 and spearheading the development of the Capacity Mapping Assessment tool, an organizational assessment method custom-built for EF’s partner foundations. She sits on the board of Eurasia Foundation of Central Asia. From 1999-2001, Coll served as EF’s Central Asia director, based in Tashkent, overseeing a small grants program in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Colin Knox, Professor & Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, Nazarbayev University

Colin Knox is a Professor and Vice Dean of Academic Affairs in the Graduate School of Public Policy, Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan and Emeritus Professor of Comparative Public Policy at Ulster University in the UK. His research interests include: public sector reform (local and international); local government; and, the evaluation of public policy. He has worked on public sector reform in many developing countries including: Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, China, Georgia, Russia, and Latvia. Knox is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and Fellow of the Higher Teaching Academy (FHEA).

​Dauren Aben, Senior Research Fellow, Eurasian Research Institute, International Kazakh-Turkish University

Dauren Aben is an independent researcher based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. He previously worked at the Eurasian Research Institute, Nazarbayev University, and the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies. A graduate of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Dauren also headed the Almaty office of the Institute’s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Maksym Sytnikov, Advocacy Officer and Analyst, Open Dialogue Foundation

Maksym Sytnikov is a political scientist and graduate of the University of Warsaw. He is a member of the human rights monitoring mission of the Italian Federation for Human Rights in Kazakhstan. Sytnikoy has worked at the Open Dialogue Foundation since 2018. Maksym Sytnikov is also one of coordinators of a global campaign #regimeservants, which advocates for personal sanctions against perpetrators of human rights violations in Kazakhstan.