Dr Asel Murzakulova is a Senior Research Fellow with UCA’s Mountain Societies Research Institute and Co-Founder of the analytical club "Mongu". 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 the 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. Currently, she is engaged in security and conflict-related research, with a focus on resource management challenges across Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Border. 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 also awarded the Diderot post-doctoral fellowship FMSH IFEAC for the research in the framework of the Center for the Study of modern Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Europe.
