Dr Noah Tucker

Dr Noah Tucker is a research fellow at the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews and an associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard. Noah has worked as a consultant to US and EU programmes supporting returnees from the Syrian conflict in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. He has served as research and research-to-practice consultant for international organisations seeking to better understand religion, conflict and trauma in Central Asia, including USAID, OSCE, the EU External Action Service, UNDP, the US State Department, the UK FCDO, USIP, UNOCT, The Global Coalition against Daesh, the French Ministry of Defence, Freedom House, and a variety of other government and NGO clients.

Recent publications include “Uzbek Women in the Syrian Conflict: First-Person Narratives and Gendered Perspectives on Mobilization and De-Mobilization” and “Trapped between Three Conflicts, Central Asian Migrants Face Problems We Can No Longer Ignore” with D. Stevan Weine. His current book project is an ethnographic study of the Central Asan mobilisation to the Syrian conflict: “We Bear Witness to Unspeakable Horrors:” Historical Violence, Contemporary Terrorism and Collective Trauma in Central Asia.

Noah has worked on Central Asian issues since 2002, specialising in religion, national identity, ethnic conflict, terrorism and digital media. He received an MA from Harvard in Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies, and a PhD at the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews on the relationship between trauma and violent extremism in Central Asia. He has spent six years living and working in in the region, primarily in Uzbekistan and Southern Kyrgyzstan, and works in Russian and Uzbek.