Asel Murzakulova

Asel is Senior Research Fellow at Mountain Societies Research Institutes, University of Central Asia and co-founder, with information agency Akipress, of the analytical club "Mongu".Between 2006 and 2011 she worked at the International Institute of Strategic Studies under the President of Kyrgyzstan, as a UNDP national expert and as a political consultant to the Interparliamentary Assembly of CIS. In 2008, she has been a visiting scholar at Davis Center, Harvard University and in 2013 at the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at
University of California, Berkeley.

Her research covers international politics and nationalism, migration, cross-border disputes in Fergana Valley, natural resource management, identity, religion, political institutions. 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. In 2015 she was awarded Diderot post doctoral fellowhship for research in a framework of the Center for the Study of modern Russia, the Caucasus and Central Europe. She obtained her PhD from Kyrgyz Russian Slavic University in 2011.