Dr. Leila ALIEVA is a Senior Common Room member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, where she previously was an academic visitor and a fellow of Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA)/Scholars Rescue Fund (SRF) and a president of a “think-tank” in Azerbaijan. In 2018 she was a research fellow at the Institute Fur Kulturwissenschaften (IFK) in Vienna, Austria. Since late 80s her research focus was on conflict analysis and resolution, as well as area studies - Azerbaijan, Caucasus, Former Soviet Union; Russia, including energy security,  democratization and civil society in the oil rich states, regional and EU and NATO integration. For two decades she was involved in various initiatives of public diplomacy and practice of conflict resolution. She was also a non-resident research associate at Russia and Eurasia Center at Uppsala University. Until 2014 back in Azerbaijan she was a founder and a head of the independent policy research Center for National and International Studies.

Her most recent publication is on how political regimes affect the perspectives and attitudes in conflict by shaping modernization on the example of Karabagh conflict. (Caucasus Survey, April, 2018)