Könül Jafarova holds her Master’s degree in Social Work from Columbia University in the City of New York funded by Open Society Foundations. During her graduate studies, she was a Research Assistant at Social Interventions Group of Columbia School of Social Work. She also worked as a Project Assistant at State Migration Service of Azerbaijan and has been collaborating with IOM Mission and ICMPD on counter-trafficking, migration training needs and migration data management in her native Azerbaijan. Prior to her PhD studies, she was a grantee of Lane Kirkland Scholarship Program at University of Wroclaw, Poland whereby she explored the implications of labor migration policy of Poland towards non-EU nationals from former Soviet Union.

Currently, she is working towards her Doctorate degree in Sociology at University of Wroclaw conducting research titled “Meritocracy and Migration in Semi-Peripheries: Occupational Careers of Migrants from Azerbaijan and Georgia in Poland”. Within her research, she is studying different mechanisms that shape careers of migrants from Azerbaijan and Georgia on the Polish labor market through meritocratic lenses and biographical narrative interviews. She is also involved in Trans-Atlantic research project “ENDURE: "Inequalities, Community Resilience and New Governance Modalities in a Post-Pandemic World" as a Research Assistant - primarily involved in Cluster 2 - exploring experiences of migrant essential workers and their resilience in Poland during COVID-19. Her main research interests lie in the intersection of labor migration, careers, biographical research and post communism.