Zarina Urmanbetova is currently completing her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Fribourg in which she focuses on the social lives of roads in Central Asia. She holds an MA in Cultural Anthropology from Hacettepe University in Ankara and a BA in Media studies from the Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked on various research projects in Kyrgyzstan linked to her research interests, including the anthropology of infrastructure, feminism, post-socialist and post-Soviet communities, memory and nostalgia, beliefs and religious practices, and decolonial approaches.