Ms. Gulnora Beknazarova
Chair of the BOARD of Trustees
Sociologist, national gender expert, and member of the board of directors in Zerkalo-Group.
Ms. Beknazarova is a member of the gender-working group of the Women and Family Affairs Committee under the President of the Government of Tajikistan. Ms. Beknazarova previously worked as a Director of LLC “Z-analytics in Tajikistan. She started her professional career in 2008, as a Head of Research unit of the Sociological Research Centre “Zerkalo”. Ms. Beknazarova holds a B.A. from the Tajik National University in Dushanbe, a Master in Gender Sociology from European Humanitarian University (2003), and Ph.D. in Social Philosophy (2007). Ms. Beknazarova is an author and co-author of several publications on social inequality, migration, and gender issues.
Ms. Juldyz Smagulova
Dean of College of Humanities and Education KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan).
Juldyz Smagulova is Dean of College of Humanities and Education at the KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan). She received her Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics from King’s College London (UK, 2012) and her Candidate of Philological Sciences from al-Farabi Kazakh National University (Kazakhstan, 2004). Juldyz Smagulova has more 20 articles and book chapters published internationally and in Kazakhstan; co-authored a textbook for secondary schools The Kazakh language for Russian-medium schools, Grade 5 (Atamura, 2015), co-authored bilingual Kazakh-Russian Dictionary of Sociolinguistics (Arman PV, 2008).
Her research can be classified under four major interrelated strands: language ideology; language and education policy; language and literacy; and language pedagogy. These strands are held together by common scholarly interest in multilingual context where different speakers have different access to linguistic and other resources.
Mr. Yuliy Yusupov
Economist, scientific director of the Center for Economic Development (www.ced.uz), and member of the Public Council for Entrepreneurship Support under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan. He has extensive experience in research and consulting work in the countries of Central Asia in two areas: a) research and consulting in the field of economic development, business development, and economic policy (in a wide range of areas), b) marketing research and consulting (in a wide range of markets). He also has experience in teaching and managing projects and organizations.
Hired to carry out work by various international organizations: UNDP, EBRD, IFC, World Bank, ABD, USAID, GIZ, JICA, OSCE, UNICEF, IFAD, UNESCO, etc., including actively involved as an international consultant, mainly on projects and EBRD programs (more than 40 projects). Author of a number of textbooks and monographs, more than 20 published analytical reports, more than 200 articles, and interviews in periodicals and collections.
Mr. Medet Tiulegenov
The Senior Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Development’s Civil Society Initiative at the University of Central Asia. Until recently he was an Assistant Professor teaching at the International and Comparative Politics Department of American University of Central Asia. His research and teaching interests include contentious politics, civil society in transition countries, identity and normative politics. Until 2008 Medet has been working in the nonprofit sector, and prior to that he was a research fellow at the National Academy of Sciences and Kyrgyz National University. He graduated in history from Kyrgyz State University (1993), received Master of Public Administration from Bowling Green State University, USA (1996) and currently is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Central European University, Austria.
Mr. Michael Hall
Michael Hall is a researcher and project director whose work focuses on the protection of human rights, the advancement of fundamental freedoms, and the prevention of conflict in Central Asia.