Joanna Lillis is a Kazakhstan-based journalist and author who has lived and worked in Central Asia since 2001, in Uzbekistan (2001-2005) and Kazakhstan (since 2005). Her reporting has featured in outlets including The Economist, The Guardian, The Independent, Eurasianet and Foreign Policy and POLITICO magazines. Prior to moving to Central Asia, she lived in Russia and worked for BBC Monitoring, the BBC World Service’s global media tracking service. While completing a BA in Modern Languages at the University of Leeds, she studied Russian in the Soviet republics of Belorussia and Ukraine before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and she has an MA in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Bradford. She is the author of Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan (2019).