Noor O’Neill Borbieva

(PhD, Harvard University)

Noor O’Neill Borbieva is an anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of religion, post-socialist studies, and Islamic studies. Her research focuses on the conflict that arises when foreigners bring new ideologies into local communities in the Kyrgyz Republic. She will spend the spring and fall semesters of 2008 as a visiting fellow at Kellogg expanding upon this interest.

Borbieva’s project, “Development in the Kyrgyz Republic: Exchange, Communal Networks, and the Foreign Presence,” is based on fieldwork she did in the Kyrgyz Republic (2003–05). In a series of articles, she will examine the impact of nation building on women’s roles and religious practice, competing interpretations of the secular/religious binary, and encounters between the international development sector and Central Asian communities. In the fall, she will teach an undergraduate anthropology course.