Contact details
About me
Rufiya Ospanova is undertaking a PhD on social innovation and power, funded by the prestigious Gordon Social Innovation Scholarship, under the supervision of Prof Michael Roy and Dr Krista Bondy. Her project aims to extend knowledge on the role of power in shaping social innovation, and on how different structures and hierarchies of power lead to differences in how ideas are created and spread throughout society.
A native of Kazakhstan, Rufiya is an international relations specialist with experience in policy development, government relations, and international cooperation. She holds a Master of Arts in International Relations from Nottingham Trent University, where her studies focused on global governance, international security, terrorism, and the political economy.
Before joining Stirling and moving to Scotland, Rufiya served as an International Relations Specialist at the Secretariat of the Rotterdam Convention under the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, focusing on pesticide management and capacity-building initiatives in Russian-speaking countries. She has worked as a Country and Programme Manager at the Secretariat of the Islamic Organization for Food Security, where she developed strategic concepts for food security and managed analytical databases on food balances. Her expertise also extends to diplomatic interactions and international projects, with a track record supporting high-level meetings, strategic communications, and policy advisory work with international experts and government ministries in Kazakhstan.
Rufiya can be contacted at: rufiya.ospanova@stir.ac.uk