Leila Alieva is a political analyst based in Baku, Azerbaijan. She is a founder and a head of the “think tank” Center for National and International Studies (2004), which covers issues of domestic and foreign policy, energy security, conflicts and security sector reform. Leila Alieva held research fellowships at Harvard University (1993-1994), UC Berkeley (2000), Woodrow Wilson Center - Kennan Institute - (1995) SAIS -Johns Hopkins University- (2001), NATO Defense College (NDC) in Rome, Italy (2005) and in 2007 at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC. She advised the President of EBRD, leading oil companies and consortia, including BP, AIOC, UNOCAL, STATOIL, served on the board of the Open Society Institute in Baku in 1998, was a National Coordinator of the Human Development Report for UNDP (1997) and since 2009 has been a member of editorial board of “Connections”, quarterly journal of the NATO PFP consortium. Her research on the issues of security, conflicts and politics in the region were published by the Oxford University Press, Sharpe, Journal of Democracy, Jane’s Intelligence Review and others. She extensively wrote on the issues of EU and NATO integration - was an author of the chapter in the book on New Euro-Atlantic Strategy in the Wider Black Sea Region (German Marshall Fund, 2005), NDC Occasional Paper N. 13 “Integrative Processes in the South Caucasus and their Security Implications” (Rome, 2006), “EU and the South Caucasus” CAP Discussion Paper, Bertelsmann Foundation, Berlin, 2006. And regularly contributes to the publications related to ENP and EaP.