Cornelius Graubner is a senior program officer with the Open Society Foundations’ Central Eurasia Project. In this role he develops and oversees the regional program portfolio in Central Asia and the South Caucasus and leads the department’s policy and research agenda on open society issues in the region.
Graubner holds an MA in Russian Studies from the European University in St. Petersburg and graduated in international relations and comparative politics from the Freie Universität Berlin in 2007. Prior to joining the Open Society Foundations he was a research associate at the Center for Governance and Empiric Conflict Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin and a visiting research fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. Between 2005 and 2007 Cornelius regularly spent time in Central Asia attached to the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, where he researched the role of informal institutions in local governance in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Graubner started his career in the late 1990s working on youth policy issues in Bosnia-Herzegovina where he was based in Sarajevo for 18 months upon graduation from high school. He is fluent in German and English, conversational in Russian, and has basic knowledge of French and Tajik. He has published articles and commented on Central Asian affairs and broader development policy issues.