Management Board

Tatiana Alexandrovna Lipina is a religious studies scholar and analyst specializing in state–religion relations, religious policy, and the prevention of violent extremism (PVE). Previously, she served at the Center as Director of the Department of Religious Studies Research.

She has more than 14 years of professional experience in expert and analytical work, including fundamental and applied research on religious processes, interfaith engagement, and socio-political developments. Her professional career began in 2011 as a Research Fellow at the Research and Analytical Center for Religious Affairs under the Agency for Religious Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Since then, she has also acquired extensive experience in conducting religious studies examinations of religious-purpose materials and the founding documents of religious associations.

Her professional experience in political analysis includes positions in various analytical institutions, including the Kazakhstan Institute for Public Development and the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Her work has focused on strategic analysis of domestic policy, religious developments, gender issues, youth affairs, social cohesion, and the prevention of violent extremism.

She has delivered professional development courses for school teachers on the subjects of secularism and the fundamentals of religious studies. At the recommendation of the Anti-Terrorist Center of the National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan, she has also delivered lectures on the prevention of religiously motivated extremism.

She has academic and teaching experience at L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University and Kazakh Humanities and Law University (now MNU), where she worked from 2013 to 2016. During this period, she served as Executive Secretary of the academic publication series Religious Studies Research at L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University. She is the author of more than 20 scholarly and analytical publications on religion, religious education, religious policy, and domestic policy, including monographs, teaching materials, and national reports.

She has contributed to the development of national conceptual documents on religious policy, as well as expert initiatives aimed at preventing violent extremism and related areas. She served as a member of the Advisory Committee from Kazakhstan for the “Sustainable Communities” project implemented under the Countering Violent Extremism in Central Asia (CVECA) project of USAID.

Over the past five years, she has completed a number of international professional development programmes, including “National Consultations on Practices in Prosecution, Rehabilitation and Reintegration (PRR)”, organized by the United Nations and the European Union Counter-Terrorism Centre (2023), and a programme on Islamic law conducted by the Ibn Sina Foundation, Allameh Tabataba’i University (Iran), and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russian Federation) (2021). She is also a graduate of the School of Analytics under the Senate of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan (2022).

She was awarded the commemorative medal “30 Years of the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan” by Decree of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan in recognition of her contribution to interfaith and social harmony.

Her areas of responsibility include religious studies research, monitoring and analysis of the religious situation, and religious studies expertise.