Azamat Nurshanov is the Deputy General Director for Scientific and Foreign Affairs at "Gylym Ordasy," Kazakhstan; a researcher at the Eurasian Research Institute (ERI), Almaty, Kazakhstan; and a lecturer in the Department of Religious and Cultural Studies at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.
He holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, where he completed his doctoral research on new Islamic movements in the context of contemporary global geopolitics. From 2023 to 2026, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, as part of the Caucasus and Central Asia Research Social Innovation (CARSI) project.
Nurshanov’s research interests include new religious and Islamist movements, religious literacy, radicalization and terrorism, religion and geopolitics, and the social and political dimensions of Islam in Central Asia. His recent research also examines the role of religious literacy in addressing emerging Islamist movements and the relationship between social media and the political behavior of youth in Kazakhstan. He has published peer-reviewed research in journals indexed in Scopus and has conducted research at the University of Michigan and Hacettepe University, as well as fieldwork in Azerbaijan. His broader academic work brings together religious studies, political and social analysis, and the study of contemporary religious and cultural transformations in Kazakhstan and the wider post-Soviet space.
