Background
Balayev was born on November 19, 1956 in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan.
Balayev was born on November 19, 1956 in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan.
In 1980, he graduated cum laude from the Department of History of Azerbaijan State University and in 1982 he started working at the Archeology and Ethnography Institute of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences. From 1985 he continued his doctoral studies at the Ethnography Institute of Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Academy of Sciences in Moscow, graduating with a Doctor of Philosophy in History in 1988.
In 1983-1985, Balayev was a researcher at the Ethnography Department of the Moscow State University.
In 2001, while in Baku, he defended another dissertation on the Azerbaijani Independence Movement in 1917-1918.
He currently serves as the Program Chair at the Center for National and International Studied and is a member of Academy of National Sciences of Azerbaijan.