LUND UNIVERSITY, SWEDEN
Rustamjon Urinboyev, Principal Investigator
Rustam Urinboyev is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology of Law at Lund University. He is a principal investigator of the EU-funded project “Central Asian Law: Legal Cultures and Business Environments in Central Asia,” which Lund University coordinates. Rustamjon works at the intersection of the sociology of law and ethnography, studying migration, corruption, governance, and penal institutions in the context of Russia and Central Asia. His current research focuses on (1) migration, shadow economy, and informal legal orders in hybrid political regimes, (2) corruption, informality, and legal pluralism in Uzbekistan, and (c) informal hierarchies, religious orders, and ethnic identities in Russian penal institutions. He is the author of Migration and Hybrid Political Regimes: Navigating the Legal Landscape in Russia (2020), published by the University of California Press.
Sherzod Eraliev, Principal Investigator
Sherzod Eraliev is a senior researcher at the Sociology of Law Department at Lund University. His research lies within migration, informality, democratization, civil society, and authoritarianism studies in Eurasia. Sherzod’s research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. He has been an Academy of Finland researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, a research fellow at the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University, and has worked with international organizations in the development, migration, and humanitarian spheres. He has been a visiting lecturer at several universities in Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. Sherzod Eraliev has co-authored, among others, “The Political Economy of Non-Western Migration Regimes: Central Asian Migrant Workers in Russia and Turkey” (Palgrave, 2022) and “Global Migration and Illiberalism in Russia, Eurasia, and Eastern Europe” (Helsinki University Press, 2024).
Elmurod Sobirov, Project Assistant
Elmurod Sobirov is a project assistant of the EU-funded project “MOCCA: Multilevel Orders of Corruption in Central Asia,” which Lund University coordinates. He is a recent graduate in Public Administration from the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration. He has studied law and social sciences at various EU universities, such as the University of South-Eastern Norway (Norway), Lodz University (Poland), Polytechnic Institute of Bragance (Portugal), European University Viadrina (Germany), and University of Oslo (Norway). His bachelor’s thesis and master’s dissertation focused on corruption, informal hierarchies, the rule of law, informal legal orders, and other existing problems in Uzbekistan. Elmurod’s main interests focus on governance in post-Soviet societies, the rule of law and corruption, and state-society relations.
Chekhros Kilichova – Project Assistant
Chekhros Kilichova is a project assistant of the EU-funded project “MOCCA: Multilevel Orders of Corruption in Central Asia,” which is coordinated by Lund University. She graduated from the University of World Economy and Diplomacy in Uzbekistan. She is studying MSc in Economic growth, Population and Development at Lund University. Before joining the project, Chekhros gained work experience in public communications as well as project and programme management. Her main interests focus on economic governance and trade relations in Central Asian countries.