Elshan Abbasov
hbs scholarship holder 2006, Baku

Elshan was born in 1977 in Baku. In 1994 he completed secondary school. In 1994-98 he pursued his undergraduate studies at the department of International Law and International Relations of Baku State University. In 2001-02 Elshan continued his studies, participating in a MA programme in political science at the Department of Political Science of the Central European University in Budapest. Now he is working as a freelance translator.

Elshan’s research project in the framework of the HBF scholarship programme is entitled “The forgotten people: the Georgian community in Azerbaijan”.

According to the latest census carried out in 1999, there are 14,900 Georgians in Azerbaijan. The majority lives in rural areas in the districts of Qax and Zaqatala in the north of Azerbaijan. They belong to different faiths, some of them Muslim and some Christian. The research is to describe strategies of constructing Georgian identity in present-day Azerbaijan.

Research topic: Грузиноязычные Поселения на Севере Азербайджана