Кыргыз Альманахы

Aida Aaly Alymbaeva, Chief Editor

Aida Aaly Alymbaeva is a PhD Candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Her PhD thesis focuses on the ethnic minority and majority relationship, processes of identification, ‘othering’, creation and maintaining of ethnic and cultural boundaries, – on the case of Kalmaks in Kyrgyzstan. Her research interests also include issues of ethnic nationalisms, genealogical imagination of ethnicity, food and identity, migration. 

Gulzat Baialieva is a PhD candidate at the Social Anthropology Department, University of Tuebingen, Germany. She holds MA degree in Political Science from Central European University (Hungary) and a graduate diploma in European Civilizations from Bishkek Humanities University (Kyrgyzstan). Currently she is a doctoral candidate at the Social Anthropology Department at the University of Tuebingen, Germany.

Her research interests include social, environmental, political anthropology, post-socialist transformations, digital ethnography and populism.

Shairbek Dzhuraev is co-founder and director at Crossroads Central Asia, a Bishkek-based research institute. He is also a Volkswagen Foundation postdoctoral fellow based at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. Shairbek previously served as deputy director at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, and dean of academic development at the American University of Central Asia. He taught international relations, foreign policy analysis, Central Asian politics, Central Asia and Russia at the American University of Central Asia. He is a member of PONARS Eurasia and is in the advisory groups of the EU-Central Asia Monitoring and the European Neighbourhood Council. Shairbek’s research interests include political regimes, international relations and foreign policymaking in Central Asia. He has a PhD from the University of St Andrews and MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science, both in International Relations.

Aikokul Maksutova is an active researcher from Kyrgyzstan advocating socially inclusive and gender sensitive approaches to social research in Central Asia. She holds a doctoral degree from Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany.  Trained as a methodologist, she focuses her research on computer-assisted qualitative and mixed-methods approaches in the fields of migration and religious studies.

Erica Marat is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Regional and Analytical Studies Department at the College of International Security Affairs (CISA) in the National Defense University. She has previously directed the Homeland Defense Fellowship Program at CISA.

Dr. Marat’s research focuses on violence, mobilization and security institutions in Eurasia, India, and Mexico. She has authored three books, including most recently The Politics of Police Reform: Society against the State in Post-Soviet Countries (Oxford University Press 2018). Her articles appeared in Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Eurasanet, and Open Democracy. Dr. Marat is currently focused on completing a book on mobilization against violence in India and Mexico. She is also engaged in a research project on China’s and Russia’s provision of public services for illiberal governances in 15 countries across five continents. The projects are funded by the Minerva DECUR grant.

Dr. Asel Murzakulova is a Senior Research Fellow with UCA’s Mountain Societies Research Institute and Co-Founder of the analytical club “Mongu” https://mongu.akipress.org/. She has extensive work experience with governmental, international and civil organizations in Central Asia. In 2008, she was a visiting scholar at the Davis Center at Harvard University, and in 2013, at the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at University of California in Berkeley. Between 2006 and 2015, she worked at the International Institute of Strategic Studies under the President of Kyrgyzstan, as a national expert to the Development International Organizations, and political consultant to the Interparliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Her research covers conflicts, migration, natural resource management, religion and nationalism. Between 2015-2020 she was engaged in security and conflict-related research, with a focus on resource management challenges across Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Border. From 2019 she have joined the AGRUMIG EU-Horizon 2020 project as postdoctoral researcher with focus on nexus between rural development, migration and agrarian transformations.

In 2013, she was awarded the International Medal of the Commission of National Education of Poland for her contribution to the development of civic education in Kyrgyzstan. 

Dr. Mahabat Sadyrbek is Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the Research Project “Conflict Regulation in Germany’s Plural Society”, in the Department of Law & Anthropology in Halle (Saale), Germany.

Mahabat Sadyrbek conceptualized her PhD project at the Institute of Central Asian Studies at the Humboldt University Berlin, focusing on Legal Pluralism in Central Asia. She was trained in the Pedagogy of Foreign Languages and studied Law in Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek), German Languages and Literature as well as Political Sciences in Germany (Hannover). She graduated from the International Master of European Studies/European Integration in Belgium (Brussels). Mahabat Sadyrbek has also completed the Doctoral Programme of Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies (BGSMCS), funded by the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal and State Governments and by Free University of Berlin.

Her research interests include International Affairs, the European Union’s Policy towards Central Asia, Development Policy, Legal, Political and Cultural Anthropology, Visual Ethnography, Customary Law (Adat) of Muslim Societies in former Soviet States and in Germany, Islam, Conflict/Dispute Management, Migration, Gender Studies ect. 

Dr. Elira Turdubaeva has a PhD degree in Media and Communications from Kyrgyzstan-Turkey Manas University. She worked at several universities, including a prior appointment as Department Head of Journalism and Mass Communications at American University of Central Asia. Currently she is a Senior Researcher on Network Analysis and Social Media at Graduate Studies Department of University of Central Asia. She is also a founder and president of a new start-up Online University in Kyrgyzstan and Association of Communicators of Kyrgyzstan. Her research focuses on media uses, political participation and media, election campaign analysis, protests and social media, social media uses, network analysis, new media studies, ICT and youth, propaganda analysis, representations of gender, journalism education, media and migration, media and activism, surveillance technologies and privacy in Central Asia, hate speech and social media, etc.