Email: a.wolters@osce-academy.net

Dr. Alexander Wolters is a DAAD Visiting Professor at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. He has worked in Kyrgyzstan and the wider region of Central Asia since 2003. In his research he focuses on the evolution of the political systems in Central Asia. He has further worked on social mobilization, the role of public politics, state and society relations, as well as religious systems, Islamic movements, and educational policies.

Email: b.bowring@bbk.ac.uk

Prof Bill Bowring has experience in Kyrgyzstan dating back to 1999 when he first travelled to the country to train advocates, prosecutors and judges. In 2000, he participated as an expert in a round table conference on ways to ensure compliance of the Kyrgyz legal system with the Convention Against Torture. He has completed further work training human rights defenders. Please see this document for a full breakdown of Prof Bowring’s work in Kyrgyzstan.

Email: J.D.Heathershaw@exeter.ac.uk

Dr Heathershaw is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Exeter and Principal Investigator (2012-2015) of the ESRC Research Project ‘Rising Powers and Conflict Management in Central Asia’.  His research concerns the conflict, security and development in Central Asia, particularly Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. He has spent a total of three years living in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan). He speaks advanced Russian and intermediate Tajiki and Kyrgyz. Heathershaw has acted as a consultant to the donor agencies of the UK, US and German government as well as several international NGOs. He completed his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2007, specialising on Tajikistan. Heathershaw has held teaching and research posts at the University of Notre Dame, the American University in Central Asia, and King’s College, London.  His first book was entitled Post-Conflict Tajikistan: the politics of peacebuilding and the emergence of legitimate order (Routledge, 2009). He is a director of the Central Eurasian Studies Society and a member of the international advisory board of the academic journal Central Asian Survey. He has also had experience of work with UNHCR in Gambia.

Email: beyer.judith@gmail.com

Judith Beyer is Full Professor of Social and Political Anthropology at the University of Konstanz in Germany. She specializes in legal anthropology and has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan) and Southeast Asia (Myanmar).  Her research focuses on the anthropology of law, the anthropology of the state and statelessness, and theories of sociality and social order.

Email: mmf@blueyonder.co.uk

Marjorie Farquharson has worked in the field of human rights and the USSR and post-Soviet states for 30 years. She has given her expert opinion on 43 cases involving asylum seekers to the UK. She has been a freelance researcher, writer and translator since 2001 and has worked in all five Central Asian States. She has done numerous research projects for UNDP, UNHCR and Amnesty International as well as independent research on Central Asian states. She was Amnesty International’s first representative in the Soviet bloc from 1994-1996 as the Director of the EU Tacis project. As a Council of Europe officer she has worked in 44 of Russia’s federal regions and helped establish a regional ombudsman institution there. She is the author of several publications on Central Asia. She is capable of giving her expertise on all Central Asian states, namely, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Marjorie is not able to provide her services pro bono, however, she is willing to negotiate a fee.

Email: shahrani@indiana.edu

M Nazif Shahrani is Professor of Anthropology, Central Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, has served two terms as Chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and Director of the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Program at IU. Shahrani is an Afghan-American anthropologist with extensive field research in Afghanistan, and has studied Afghan refugee communities in Pakistan & Turkey. Since 1992 he has also conducted field research in post-Soviet Muslim republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. He is interested in the impact of Islam on social life, institutional dynamics and political culture of Muslims, problems of state-failure, role of nationalism in social fragmentation in multi-ethnic nation-states, and the political economy of international assistance to postcolonial failing states and its consequences. He grew-up bilingual in Uzbek & Tajik/Dari/Farsi, learned Pashtu, Kyrgyz, English and some Arabic.

Email: mccormack.meghan@gmail.com

Prof. Meghan McCormack, JD has lived and worked in Kyrgyzstan since 2012, conducting research on women’s rights and the rule of law under the auspices of Yale Law School, the Fulbright Program, and UN Women. A lawyer by training, she currently works in the law faculty of the American University of Central Asia, where she teaches on international law, human rights, and gender issues. Her prior research has covered topics such as informal justice institutions in Kyrgyzstan, conflict along the un-delimited Kyrgyzstani-Tajikistani border, and gender issues related to international migration, non-consensual marriage, political and economic participation, and religious beliefs and practices.  She speaks English, advanced Kyrgyz and intermediate Russian; elementary Spanish and French. She is currently learning Tajik (beginner).

E-mail: philipp.schroeder@ethno.uni-freiburg.de

Dr Philipp Schröder is a Social/Cultural Anthropologist who has specialised in Central Asia, especially Kyrgyzstan, since 2002. His areas of research and publication have been social integration and conflict, political economies and migration, youth and gender relations. Currently, he is a lecturer and postdoctoral scholar at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Freiburg. In recent years he has served as a consultant for agencies such as the German Federal Foreign Office (AA), Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the World Bank, UN Women and the University of Central Asia (UCA). Furthermore, he is a research affiliate at the “International Security and Development Center” (ISDC, Berlin).