Leora Eisenberg

Leora Eisenberg entered the History Department as a Ph.D. student in 2021. She earned her B.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Princeton University, summa cum laude, in 2020 and her M.A. in History from Harvard University in 2023. Leora's dissertation describes the development of national music and dance in Soviet Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, taking her to Central Asia often. Grants and fellowships such as the Blavatnik Archive Research Grant, American Councils Research Scholar Grant, Critical Language Scholarship, and others have supported her research, which has been published in Central Asian Survey, Voices on Central Asia, and the sites of the Harvard Davis Center and NYU Jordan Center, where it won the Grand Prize of the 2022 Graduate Student Essay Competition. Her most cherished award, however, was her invitation to sing live on the Uzbek television show "Yoshlar Oqshomi" (lit. "Evening of Youth") in January 2024.