Leyla  Jafarova 

Leyla Jafarova is a Ph.D. candidate in the anthropology department. Her doctoral research focuses on the emergence and development of humanitarian ethics of care for the unidentified dead in post-war Azerbaijan and the production of knowledge in this regard. Leyla also explores how families of missing persons in post-war Azerbaijan construct their personal truths and navigate their experiences of loss and healing. She is examining how their alternative truths often exist alongside and are sidelined by dominant humanitarian regimes of truth that exclusively rely on forensic scientific evidence. To learn more about Jafarova’s research and publications, visit her webpage.

In Spring 2024, Leyla received a CISS Summer mini-grant to aid her in accessing archival materials from the Open Society Archives (OSA) in Budapest, Hungary. The OSA is renowned for its extensive collection of documents related to the Soviet Union and its successor states. This archival work will complement her already completed 12-month-long ethnographic study in post-war Azerbaijan. It will contextualize Azerbaijan’s realities within a broader historical framework by exploring the Soviet Union’s approach to addressing the issue of missing persons and the legacy it left in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Learn more in our featured article.