KONSTANTIN ASH, kash@ucsd.edu 

Konstantin is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of California - San Diego. His research focuses on explaining contentious politics, especially identity-based conflict, in the Middle East and former Soviet Union through experiments and statistical inference, with some broader application of these methods to the study of identity-based political interaction. His most recent project focused on the dynamics of allegiance formation in civil conflicts along ethnic. religious and regional lines, with particular focus on Syria and Lebanon. In part, he continues this line of research in Kyrgyzstan with a study of the dynamics of ethnic interaction between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek in the South of Kyrgyzstan. Konstantin’s previous research articles have been published or are forthcoming in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Democratization and Terrorism and Political Violence.