Sahib Jafarov is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Toronto, specializing in comparative politics with a regional focus on the post-Soviet space and Turkey. His research examines authoritarian durability, elite defection, and hidden resistance within regimes, with a dissertation focused on covert elite subversion. He holds master’s degrees in Public Policy from King’s College London and in Political Science from the University of Toronto. Jafarov has held a visiting fellowship at George Washington University and previously worked on policy analysis and political research at the Asian Development Bank and Azerbaijan’s presidential policy think tank.