Founders
PD Dr.habil. Rano Turaeva, Ludwig Maximillian University of Muenchen
Dr. Rano Turaeva-Hoehne is a habilitated ethnologist and lecturer at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as well as co-founder of the Central & Inner Asia Policy Research Institute (CIAPRI). She combines many years of scientific research with application-oriented knowledge transfer and regularly advises on migration-, social-, and governance-related issues in the post-soviet space. Her expertise specifically encompasses Central and Inner Asia as well as the South Caucasus and lies at the intersection of migration and mobility, informal economies, debt and dependency relations, urban transformations, gender, as well as questions of state regulation and societal resilience. Dr. Turaeva-Hoehne is the author of the monograph Migration and Identity: The Uzbek Experience (Routledge, 2016) and has completed her second monograph Migration and Islam in Russia (Brill, 2026). She has also edited several collective volumes and special issues (among others with Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan as well as in Extreme Anthropology and Sociology of Islam) and published in international academic journals such as Cities, Nationalities Papers, Inner Asia, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Central Asian Affairs, and Central Asian Survey. As a founder of CIAPRI, she stands for evidence-based, independent analysis and the development of practice-oriented formats - from policy briefs and stakeholder dialogues to trainings and strategic consulting - with special reference to Munich as an internationally networked location.
PD Dr.habil. Irina Morozova, University of Regensburg
Dr. Morozova is a scholar and expert in Central and Inner Asian studies. She is the author of numerous publications, a principal investigator of academic projects, and an organizer of consortia and expert meetings. She earned her doctoral degree (PhD) in history in 2002 at the Institute of Asian and African Studies of Lomonosov Moscow State University; in 2022, she habilitated at the University of Regensburg in the field of Eastern European History. Dr. Morozova's fields of expertise include modern and contemporary history as well as international relations in Central and Inner Asia, the strategic partnership between Europe and Central Asia, the transformation of political elites, post-socialist transformation processes, economic reforms and public debates, as well as the industrial history of Central Asia. She led individual and collaborative research projects at Leiden University, the University of Amsterdam, the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Regensburg, and the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS). She was a visiting professor at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center (Hokkaido University) and at the National Museum of Ethnography in Osaka, as well as a guest lecturer at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, the NATO School Oberammergau, the University of Cambridge, the Institute for Oriental Studies and International Relations of Kazan Federal University, Turan University in Almaty, and the Asia-Pacific Research Center of Hanyang University in Seoul. Dr. Morozova publishes extensively in international peer-reviewed journals. Her monographs include Socialist Revolutions in Asia: The Social History of Mongolia (Routledge); she is the editor of collective volumes such as Towards Social Stability and Democratic Governance in Central Eurasia: Challenges to Regional Security (IOS Press).
