Natalya Kosmarskaya is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies (RussianAcademy of Sciences, Moscow). She has published extensively on Russophone minorities in Central Asia, post-Soviet diasporas, gender and migration and, in recent years, on perceptions of urban change by the residents of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Between 2007 and 2012 she was a participant of the international research project “Exploring Urban Identity and Community Relations in Post-Soviet Central Asia” supported by the Leverhulme Trust (UK).