Barbara Junisbai

• PhD, Political Science, Indiana University
• MIS, Information Science, Indiana University
• BA, International Relations and Geography, San Francisco State University

• post-Soviet politics, including comparative authoritarianism, intra-regime dynamics, and public opinion
• scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL), including liberatory pedagogies, prison education, and organizational learning

Junisbai, Barbara. (forthcoming, February 2025). The Pitfalls of Family Rule in Kazakhstan and Beyond. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

Barbara Junisbai. 2022. “Outsourcing Violence: Provocateurs and Power Struggles in Kazakhstan, January 2022,” PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 781. With Dinissa Duvanova.

Barbara Junisbai. 2020. “Are Youth Different?  The Nazarbayev Generation and Public Opinion in Kazakhstan.” Problems of Postcommunism, 67 (3): 251-263. With Azamat Junisbai.

Junisbai, Barbara. 2016. “A Pragmatic and Flexible Approach to Information Literacy: Findings from a Three-Year Study of Faculty-Librarian Collaboration.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 42 (5): 604-611. With Sara Lowe,and Natalie Tagge.

Junisbai, Barbara. 2014. “The Promise and Potential Pitfalls of a ‘Learning-Centered’ Approach to Creative Social Inquiry.” Journal of Political Science Education 10 (3): 331-351.

Junisbai, Barbara. 2012. “Improbable but Potentially Pivotal Oppositions: Privatization, Capitalists, and Political Contestation in the Post-Soviet Autocracies.” Perspectives on Politics 10 (4): 891-916.

Signature Course Fellow, Notre Dame Insitute for Ethics and the Common Good, 2024-2025

Student Marshal, elected by Pitzer seniors to represent the graduating classes of 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024

Keynote speaker, After Grad: Teaching Careers Week, University of California Riverside, 2022

Chair,  Central Eurasian Studies Society Communications Committee, 2022-2023

Board member, Central Eurasian Studies Society, 2021-2023 (elected)

Course Development Grant, Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity, 2023-2024 (with Tessa Hicks-Peterson, Stephanie Liu-Rojas, Tricia Morgan, and Kathy Yep)

Faculty Co-Director, Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), The Claremont Colleges, 2021-2024

Inaugural Faculty Curator, The Work of Yusef Pierce, Pitzer College Art Galleries, 2021

External reviewer, Carnegie Corporation of New York, since 2021

Member, Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS Eurasia), since 2017