CeLCAR is excited to welcome Gulnisa Nazarova as its new director! Gulnisa has a history of supporting our center and of supporting various important initiatives regarding the languages and people of the Central Asian region.  

Before coming to Indiana University, Gulnisa received a graduate degree in Russian Language and Literature from Ivanovo State University in Ivanovo, Russia, and received also her PhD in Philological Sciences at the Institute of Linguistics in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Here at IU, Gulnisa has worked at CEUS since 2005 and for CeLCAR from 2005 to 2016, working with CeLCAR to publishing with Georgetown University Press two textbooks, Uyghur: An Elementary Textbook and Uyghur: An Intermediate Textbook. She was promoted to the rank of Teaching Professor in 2021 and in July 2021 was awarded the title of John D. Soper Teaching Professor. She was also appointed as Director of CeLCAR in July.  

Gulnisa’s research interests are Uyghur language and culture; comparative lexicology of Turkic languages; problems of etymology; ethnography; methods of teaching; Uyghur migration in 1950s and 1960s from Xinjiang to the Soviet Central Asia (current). Recent awards include becoming a member of the Alliance of Distinguished and Titled Professors in July 2021 (seehttps://honorsandawards.iu.edu/awards/honoree/10529.htmland receiving the Trustees Teaching Award in the At-Large NTT Faculty competition in 2015. Gulnisa is also a Uyghur language tester since 2012 for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages/Interagency Language Roundtable Oral Proficiency Interview (ACTFL/ILR OPI).