Khazar University Baku

Dr. Farda Asadov defended his PhD thesis on Arab Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Saint-Petersburg in 1987. He is Head of Arab Studies in the Institute of Oriental Studies in Baku, Azerbaijan and also Vice Rector for International Affairs of Khazar University (Baku). Dr. Asadov is author of about 40 scholarly publications on issues of the economy of medieval Muslim society and the cultural interaction of Muslim Arabs and non-Muslim population in the eastern part of Arab caliphate – Central Asia and the Caucasus – published in Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Sweden, Turkey, Israel, and the UK. He worked as Executive Director of Open Society Institute – Assistance Foundation (Azerbaijan) in 2001-2011. OSI-AF supported a number of programs aimed at strengthening civil society and fundamental human rights in the country. In the ISSICEU project, Farda Asadov is the research team leader of WP2.

Elvin Yusifli is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science and International Relations of Khazar University. He teaches a course on theory of international relations at Khazar University.
Elvin Yusifli received BA in International Relations from Baku State University and did MA in Social and Public Policy at Duquesne University as an Edmund S. Muskie Fellow. His areas of research interest include political and international relations theories and specific public policy issues as decentralization and corruption. In addition to his academic and teaching activities, Elvin Yusifli is also the projector director of "Azerbaijan Partnership for Transparency" at Transparency Azerbaijan, the local chapter of Transparency International. His ongoing work in the non-profit sector has equipped him with the experience that could come in handy in his involvement in this particular project. As a junior researcher in the ISSICEU project, Elvin is responsible for legislation analysis and assists in conducting expert interviews.

Bakhtiyar Aslanov is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Khazar University. He received his BA in International Relations from Khazar University in 2009 in Azerbaijan. As a Rotary Peace Fellow, he obtained his MA in International Relations, Specialization in Peace and Conflict Studies from the Uppsala University in 2014 in Sweden. As a Head of Peace and Conflict Research Department in the Society for Humanitarian Research in Azerbaijan, he coordinates and organizes a number of conflict transformation and confidence building projects on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and other regional conflicts since 2019 up to now. His areas of research interest include conflict transformation, mediation, reconciliation and peace building. In the ISSICEU project, as a research assistant to Dr Katharina Hoffmann Baktiyar is responsible for data collection and logistics support.

Ariz Huseynov holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Manchester, UK. He is a lecturer at the Department of International Relations and Political Science, Khazar University. Previously, he had worked as an Advisor Expert on the Wider Black Sea Area at the Foreign Policy Analysis Department, Center for Strategic Studies (SAM), and taught Political Science and Geopolitics at Qafqaz University. His field of research includes Eastern European Politics and Energy Issues. He conducts the fieldwork in Azerbaijan. Ariz joined the ISSICEU project in October 2014 as a research assistant and is responsible for data collection and logistics support.