Abulfaz Suleimanov was born on the January 17th, 1975 in Azerbaijan’s Ydjarsskom region. In 1991, he began studying Sociology in Istanbul, Turkey. After graduating in 1995, Abulfaz continued his Magistrate studies at the University of Istanbul. In 1998, he successfully defended his dissertation on the “Soviet Ideology’s Influence on History Courses in Azeri Middle Schools (1980-1991)” and proceeded to pursue his doctorate at the University of Istanbul’s Sociology department. In June, 2003 he successfully defended his doctoral thesis, “Search for the national 'I' in Contemporary Azerbaijan: A Sociological Perspective.”
In 2000, Abulfaz began teaching at “Cavcas”, a private university. He lectures for the Sociology and Socio-Psychology for the following departments: International Relations, International Law, Government and Economic Administration and Philology. Since September, 2003 he has become a senior fellow at Azerbaijan’s National Academy of Science’s Institute for Philosophy and Political Justice, where he teaches in the departments of Sociology and Socio-Psychology.
Abulfaz’s HBS project is titled “The Molokan community in Azerbaijan: From religious to nationalist identity.” First, the project attempts to describe the manner emigrants from Molokan settlements identify themselves. Abulfaz intends to investigate the various stereotypes of Molokan people. Additionally, he wants to investigate the influence the urbanization process and migration had on changes within this community. Abulfaz also plans to trace the dynamics of these changes. After investigating these different aspects of the puzzle, he hopes to describe commonalities between the Molokan living in Azerbaijan and specific identities traced back to the community of Molokan actors.