Current role:  Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Global Studies, University of Sussex. Editor of the Journal of Caucasian Studies.

Education: BA Sociology, Middle East Technical University (METU); MA Eurasian Studies, METU; PhD Migration Studies, University of Sussex.

Fields of interest: Migration, Gender, Caucasus, Social Research Methods, Diaspora, Identity, Culture, Development Studies, Post-Conflict Studies.

Ayhan Kaya is Professor of Politics and Jean Monnet Chair of European Politics of Interculturalism at the Department of International Relations, Istanbul Bilgi University; Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence; and a member of the Science Academy, Turkey. He is currently European Research Council Advanced Grant holder (ERC AdG, 2019-2024). He received his PhD and MA degrees at the University of Warwick, England. Kaya was previously a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Florence, Italy, and adjunct lecturer at the New York University, Florence in 2016-2017. He previously worked and taught at the European University Viadrina as Aziz Nesin Chair in 2013, and at Malmö University, Sweden as the Willy Brandt Chair in 2011. He is specialised on European identities, Euro-Turks in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, Circassian diaspora in Turkey, the construction and articulation of modern transnational identities, refugee studies in Turkey, conventional and nonconventional forms of political participation in Turkey, and the rise of populist movements in the EU. His recent manuscripts are Syrian Refugees in Turkey: Between Reception and Integration (Switzerland: Springer IMISCOE, 2023, co-authored with Z. Şahin-Mencütek, E. Gökalp-Aras, and S. B. Rottmann), and Populism and Heritage in Europe. Lost in Diversity and Unity (London: Routledge, 2019). His recent edited volumes are Nativist and Islamist Radicalism: Anger and Anxiety (London: Routledge, 2023, with Aysenur Benevento and Metin Koca); Memory in European Populism (London: Routledge, 2019, with Chiara de Cesari). Some of his books are Turkish Origin Migrants and their Descendants: Hyphenated Identities in Transnational Space (Palgrave, 2018), Europeanization and Tolerance in Turkey (London: Palgrave, 2013); Islam, Migration and Integration: The Age of Securitization (London: Palgrave, 2012); Contemporary Migrations in Turkey: Integration or Return (Istanbul Bilgi University Press, 2015, in Turkish, co-edited with Murat Erdoğan), Belgian-Turks, Brussels: King Baudouin Foundation, 2008, co-written with Ferhat Kentel), Euro-Turks: A Bridge or a Breach between Turkey and the EU (Brussels: CEPS Publications, 2005, co-written with Ferhat Kentel, Turkish version by Bilgi University); wrote another book titled Sicher in Kreuzberg: Constructing Diasporas, published in two languages, English (Bielefeld: Transkript verlag, 2001) and Turkish (Istanbul: Büke Yayınları, 2000). He also translated Ethnic Groups and Boundaries by Fredrik Barth and Citizenship and Social Classes by T. H. Marshall and Tom Bottomore to Turkish language. He also edited several books on migration, integration, citizenship, and diasporas. Kaya’s publications have been translated to several languages such as French, German, Japanese, Italian, Arabic and Dutch. Kaya was actively involved in two FP7 and three Horizon 2020 projects, and now he is involved in two different Horizon 2020 research projects on migration. Kaya received Turkish Social Science Association Prize in 2003; Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA-GEBİP) Prize in 2005; Sedat Simavi Research Prize in 2005; Euroactiv-Turkey European Prize in 2008, the Prize for the best Text Book given by TÜBA; and also the Prize for excellence in teaching at the Department of International Relations, Istanbul Bilgi University in 2013 and 2017. 

Vladimir Bobrovnikov, Ph.D. in Global History, is chair of the Department of Central Asia, Caucasus and Volga-Ural Studies in Institute for Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences and professor at Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies in National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Bobrovnikov had visiting positions at the Instiut Français d’Etudes Anatoliennes (Istanbul, Turkey), Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Germany), Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris, France), Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Amsterdam, Netherlands). His research interests focus on the legal history and anthropology of non-Christian rural populations under the colonial and socialist rules from the late eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. His major field of expertise is Islam in Russia and Caucasus, as well as the history of Oriental Studies in Europe. He authored and (co-)edited: Custom, Law and Violence Among the North Caucasus Muslims (in Russian, Vostochnaia literatura 2002); Zealots of Islam: The Cult of Saints and Sufism in Central Asia and the Caucasus (in Russian, Vostochnaia literatura 2003); North Caucasus in the Russian Empire (in Russian, NLO 2007); Custom and Law in Written Monuments from Dagestan, 5th – early 20th Centuries (2 Vol., in Russian, Marjani Publishers 2009); Dagestan and the Muslim Orient (in Russian, Marjani Publishers 2010); Voyage au pays des Avars (Daghestan, Russie, début du XXIe siècle) (Cartouche 2011); Posters of the Soviet Orient, 1918–1940. Catalogue (in Russian, Marjani Publishers 2013); Orientalism vs. Orientology (in Russian, Sadra 2016); Syntaslar. Funeral Steles of the Noghay Steppe. Catalogue (in Russian, Marjani Publishers 2016); Muslims in the New Imperial History (in Russian, Sadra 2017); Russia’s Islam: Essays in History and Culture (in Russian, Institute for Oriental Studies 2019). His publications also include articles in English, Russian, French, German, and Arabic, the most recent of which are “Muslims in Imperial Russia”, American Historical Review (2017 122:1); “Islamic Discourse of Visual Propaganda in the Interwar Soviet Orient, 1918–1940”, Islamology (2017 7:2); “Applied Oriental Studies of Russiaʾs Own Islam: From Orthodox Missionaries to Militant Godless and Wahhabis”, Insight Turkey (2018 20:4); “Inventing a New Legal Tradition: The Discourse of ‘Traditional Islam’ in Post-Communist Dagestan,” in: R. Bekkin, ed., The Concept of Traditional Islam in Modern Islamic Discourse in Russia (University of Saraevo Press, 2019); “Fazliddin Muhammadiev’s Journey to the “Other World”: The History of a Cold War Ḥajjnāma,” Die Welt des Islams (2021 62:1); “Customary Law. 4. Northwest Caucasus”, in Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson, eds., Encyclopaedy of Islam, THREE (Brill 2022-1).