Introducing the Kazakh Team
May 21, 2016
Global Dialogue’s Kazakh team was launched in 2015 under the inspiration and direction of Aigul Zabirova. With amazing determination they disseminate Global Dialogue throughout Kazakhstan, overcoming all the challenges of translation into the Kazakh language.
Aigul Zabirova is a Professor of Sociology and founding chair of the Sociology Department at the L.M. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Astana, Kazakhstan. She studied in Moscow and obtained her doctorate in sociology from the Institute of Sociology at the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, 2004). Her current research focuses on socioeconomic situation of private households in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; she is co-author of the book entitled When Salary is not enough... Private Households in Central Asia (Verlag, May 2015).
Aigul teaches a variety of courses on urban sociology and social theory; her research and writing focus primarily on identity politics in post-Soviet space, and urbanization and migration in Central Asia. She has received several international awards and scholarships from the MacArthur foundation (2000-01, 2002-03), INTAS (2005-07), TACIS (2007), Volkswagen Foundation (2011-13), Open Society Institute (2001-03), Central European University (2001, 2008) as well as local scholarships and awards from the Kazakh Ministry of Science. She has been Research Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK (2011), Lund University, Sweden (2008), Warwick University, UK (2007), Indiana University, USA (2002). She is a member of the International Sociological Association since 2010.
Bayan Smagambet is an Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at the Eurasian National University. She studied in Almaty and received her Candidate of Sciences in sociology from the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in1998. She teaches classes on the history of sociology and economic sociology. Her research interests are social inequality and labor market. She has published several textbooks in Kazakh – History of Sociology, Economic Sociology, Social History – and about 20 research articles.
Adil Rodionov is a senior lecturer of the Department of Sociology at the Eurasian National University. He also works in one of the Kazakhstani think tanks “Institute of Eurasian Integration.” He earned his PhD in sociology from the Eurasian National University (2009). He has been Research Fellow at the Central European University (Budapest, Hungary, 2013-14). His research interests are in the fields of social networks, civil society, and the history of social science(s). His current research project focuses on networks of Kazakhstani nongovernmental organizations. A synopsis of this project can be found here: http://e-valuation.kz/social_capital_en.html.
Gani Madi is a teacher in the Department of Sociology at the Eurasian National University where he received his MA in sociology in 2010. He teaches such subjects as theoretical sociology, structure and stratification of society, economic sociology, elitology, sociology of migration and introduction to sociology. He is currently interested in power dynamics in the workplace and different forms of managerial control of labor as well as Marxist theory.
