Email: b.bowring@bbk.ac.uk

Prof Bowring has experience in Turkmenistan dating back to 2008 when he travelled to the country at the invitation of the ODIHR to be the first foreign professor since 1991 to teach in the State University in Ashgabad. He delivered a course of five lectures on Law and International Relations, and while there obtained an excellent grounding in the realities of life in Turkmenistan. Please see this document for a full breakdown of Prof Bowring’s work in Turkmenistan.

Email: luca.anceschi@glasgow.ac.uk

Dr Luca Anceschi is Lecturer in Central Asian Studies at the University of Glasgow, UK. His research areas of expertise are focussed on the Politics and International Relations of post-Soviet Central Asia. Luca’s first book, Turkmenistan’s foreign policy – Positive Neutrality and the Consolidation of the Turkmen regime (Routledge 2008), represents the first book-length analysis of Turkmenistan’s foreign policy published in Western languages. Luca is willing to provide expert reports on Turkmenistan. He is a native Italian speaker and has advanced control of Russian.

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: speyrouse@email.gwu.edu

Sebastien Peyrouse is a Research Professor of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University and a Senior Research Fellow at East-West Institute in Washington D.C. Prior to joining the George Washington University and the East-West Institute, Prof. Peyrouse worked at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute& Silk Road Studies Program as well as at the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm. His main areas of expertise are political systems in Central Asia, Islam and religious minorities, and Central Asia’s geopolitical positioning toward China, Russia and South Asia. Professor Peyrouse is the author of Turkmenistan. Strategies of Power, Dilemmas of Development (M. E. Sharpe, 2011), and the co-author of The ‘Chinese Question’ in Central Asia. Domestic Order, Social Changes, and the Chinese Factor (Hurst, Columbia University Press, 2012) and of Globalizing Central Asia. Geopolitics and the Challenges of Economic Development (M.E. Sharpe, 2012). He has also co-edited China and India in Central Asia. A new “Great Game”? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and Mapping Central Asia: Indian Perceptions and Strategies (Ashgate, 2011).

Email: slavomir.horak@post.cz

Slavomír Horák is an Associate Professor of Political and Cultural Geography at the Department of Russian and East European Studies, Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. His research covers political, social and economic issues in Central Asia. He is the author of several books on Central Asian and Afghan internal development as well as numerous articles published in Czech, Russian and English scholarly journals. He particularly focuses on Turkmenistan’s domestic issues, especially informal politics and state- and nation-building. Slavomir Horak is willing to provide his services for a negotiable fee. He is a native Czech speaker and has highly advanced knowledge in Russian and advanced knowledge in English. He has intermediate knowledge in Persia/Tajik, Georgian and Spanish and can comprehend reading in Turkmen, Azeri, French or Ukrainian.