Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili is Founding Director of the Center for Governance and Markets and a Professor at SPIA. Her research focuses on issues of self-governance, security, political economy, and public sector reform in Eurasia, Central Eurasia, and South Asia. She is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a Distinguished Fellow of Peace and International Cooperation at the Institute for Humane Studies.
Murtazashvili is the author of several books including Land, the State, and War: Property Institutions and Political Order in Afghanistan (Cambridge University Press, 2021) with Ilia Murtazashvili, and Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan (Cambridge University Press, 2016), which received the Best Book Award in Social Sciences by the Central Eurasian Studies Society and received honorable mention from the International Development Section of the International Studies Association. Murtazashvili has advised the United States Agency for International Development, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, World Bank, the US Department of Defense, the United Nations Development Program, and UNICEF.
She is the President of the Central Eurasian Studies Society and a board member of CEDOS a Kyiv-based organization focused on urban policy and education in Ukraine. She is a member of PONARS Eurasia, a research organization focused on security issues in Eurasia. She previously served as a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center.
Courses Taught
- PIA 2544 - Central Eurasia: Geopolitics, Security, and Political Economy
- PIA 2529 - Political Economy Analysis for Global Affairs
- PIA 3012 - Comparative Governance
- State Building
- PhD - Political Science (2009) University of Wisconsin—Madison
- M.A. - Agricultural and Applied Economics (2006) - University of Wisconsin—Madison
- M.A. Political Science (2002) - University of Wisconsin--Madison
- B.S in Foreign Service (1997) - Georgetown University
Education & Training
Books
- Governing Differences: Social Diversity, Polycentric Political Economy and Modus Vivendi (with Paul Dragoș Aligică). Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025.
- Toward a Political Economy of the Commons: Simple Rules for Sustainability. (with with Meina Cai, Ilia Murtazashvili, and Raufhon Salahodjaev). Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022.
- Land, the State, and War: Property Institutions and Political Order in Afghanistan (with Ilia Murtazashvili). Cambridge Studies in Economics, Choice and Society Series. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
- The Origins and Consequences of Property Rights. (with Colin Harris, Meina Cai, and Ilia Murtazashvili). Cambridge University Press, 2020.
- Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Journal Articles
- Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Ilia Murtazashvili. "Coercive Capacity, Land Reform and Political Order in Afghanistan." Central Asian Survey 36, no. 2 (2017): 212–30.
- Cai, Meina, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Ilia Murtazashvili, and Hui Wang. 2020. “Sugarcoating the Bitter Pill: Compensation, Land Governance, and Opposition to Land Expropriation in China.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 47(6): 1371–92.
- Cai, Meina, Ilia Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, and Raufhon Salahodjaev. 2020. “Patience and Climate Change Mitigation: Global Evidence.” Environmental Research 186: 109552.
- Jochem, Torsten, Ilia Murtazashvili, and Jennifer Murtazashvili. 2020. “Can the Design of Electoral Institutions Improve Perceptions of Democracy in Fragile States? Evidence from Afghanistan.” Journal of Global Security Studies 5(3): 443–62.
- Cai, Meina, Ilia Murtazashvili, and Jennifer Murtazashvili. 2020. “The Politics of Land Property Rights.” Journal of Institutional Economics 16(2): 151–67.
- Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick. 2021. “The Endurance and Evolution of Afghan Customary Governance.” Current History 120 (825): 140–45.
- Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick, Ilia Murtazashvili, Tymofiy Mylovanov. “American Institutional Exceptionalism and the Trump Presidency.” 2021 Independent Review.
Media/Op-Eds
- Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick. "In Israel, wartime reality doesn't match what you see on the internet." Washington Post. March 27, 2026.
- Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick. "How Hope for Unity Can Erode After Tragedy." The Dispatch. July 21, 2024.
- Brik, Tymofii, and Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili. “The Source of Ukraine’s Resilience,” Foreign Affairs. June 28, 2022.
- Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick. “Northern Afghanistan Once Kept Out The Taliban. Why Has It Fallen So Quickly This Time?” Washington Post. July 28, 2021,
- Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick. “How Will the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan Affect the Countries of Central Asia? Interview with Jennifer Murtazashvili.” Central Asian Bureau for Analytical Reporting. July 12, 2021.
- Expert analysis, “Hopes Dim for Reformed Kyrgyzstan as New President Consolidates Power.” Atlantic Council. October 28, 2020.
- Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick. October 27, 2020. “Community Before Politics.” Discourse Magazine. October 27, 2020.
- Formal and informal political institutions
- Political economy of development
- Decentralization and local governance
- Post-conflict reconstruction
