Aksana Ismailbekova

Aksana Ismailbekova is a research fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum-Moderner Orient (ZMO). Her research work focuses on kinship, ethnicity, patronage, conflict and gender in Kyrgyzstan. Her monograph Blood Ties and the Native Son: Poetics of Patronage in Kyrgyzstan was published by Indiana University Press in 2017. Ismailbekova has co-edited a monograph on Surviving Everyday Life: The Securityscapes of Threatened People in Kyrgyzstan, published with Bristol University Press in 2020.

Scientific achievements

For her doctoral thesis, completed in 2012 at the MPI for Social Anthropology in Halle, Ismailbekova conducted ethnographic research on Kyrgyz kinship and networks of political patronage in rural Kyrgyz communities. From 2016-2019 she continued her research on kinship as part of the international project on ‘Informal governance, kinship and corruption’ (funded by the British Academy - DFID), traveling back to Kyrgyzstan to do an ethnography of kinship and informal governance.

All previous projects were successfully completed and delivered scientific results in the form of a manuscript, peer-reviewed articles (Central Asian Survey, Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, and Nationalities Papers), and mass media articles.

Additionally Aksana has taught several courses in anthropology at the Martin Luther University and Freie University. She acts as PhD supervisor of two students at Kazakh State University, as supervisor of BA and MA students, and serves as a board member of the Central Eurasian Studies Association, Central Asia & Siberia Specialized Information Service, and Central Asian Survey.