3rd Annual Graduate Student Conference on Сentral Asia

Friday, April 18, 2025

4:30- 4:40 pm: Welcoming Remarks

4:45-5:45 pm: Keynote Lecture

• Dr. Marsha McGraw Olive, Professorial Lecturer, Johns Hopkins SAIS, "Strains and Potential Gains:  Trump's Evolving Worldview and the Future of Central Asia"

Saturday, April 19, 2025

9:00-10:30 am: Keynote Lecture

• Dr. Artemy M. Kalinovsky, Professor, Temple University, "The Central Asian Origins of Post-Socialist Economic Reforms"

10:40 am - 12:30 pm: Panel I

Faith, Identity, and Modernity: Soviet Experiments in Central Asia

Chair: Dr. Nargis Kassenova, Director, Program on Central Asia, Davis Center 

Presenters:

• Sylvan Perlmutter, University of Michigan, "Making an Anti-Religious Generation in Early Soviet Kazakhstan, 1921-1933: Spectacle, Violence, and Archival Silence"
• Emma Larson, Columbia University, "Day of Abolition of Kalym in the Kazakh ASSR, 1924-1932"
• Nurlan Kabdylkhak, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "Negotiating Faith: Soviet Religious Policy and Muslim Communities in Kazakhstan, 1920s-1930s"
• Alexandra Dennett, Harvard University, "Model Correspondent: Max Penson Photographs the Construction of Soviet Uzbekistan"
• Marina Sivak, Freie Universität Berlin, "Echoes of the Past, Visions of the Future in the Early 1930s: Modernization Discourses in Lapin and Pilnjak's Tajikistan"

12:30-1:30 pm: Artist Talk 

• Farrah Karapetian, Artist, University of San Diego, Exhibition "Things They Shared" at the Davis Center

2:30-4:00 pm: Panel II 

Borders, Bodies, and Belonging: Forced Migration and Social Control in Soviet Central Asia

Chair: Dr. Nari Shelekpayev, Yale University

Presenters:

• Murid Shah Nadiri, University of Oxford, "The Ismailis Between Empires: Alliances and Loyalties in the Afghan-British-Soviet Borderlands"
• Ben Hales,  Harvard University, "Burying the Herdlord in Pastoral Xinjiang: The Cleansing of the Class Ranks in Altay, 1968-1972"
• Harry Shaheen, Harvard University, "Kazakh Migrants Between Xinjiang Collectivization and the Soviet Virgin Lands Campaign: The 1962 'Yi-Ta' Incident Re-Examined"
• Khasan Redjaboev, University of Wisconsin–Madison, "Bound by the State: Women, Forced Labor and Communist Colonial Legacies in Eurasia"

Chair: Khasan Redjaboev, PhD Candidate, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Fellow, Davis Center

Presenters:

• Yuliya Ten, Georgetown University, "Understanding Soviet Repressions through Gulag Survivors’ Gaze: Camp Testimonies from Kazakhstan"
• Jack Leydiker, Yale University, "Gratitude at Gunpoint: Soviet Representations of Kazakh Veterans of the Second World War"
• Mia Hanson, University of Pittsburgh, "Issues of 'Building Communism': Occupational Safety and the Soviet Economy at Odds in Central Asia, 1956-1969"
• Valerie Browne, Harvard University, "Accessing National Belonging in Kazakhstan: Russophone Almatyntsy and the Kazakh Language Learning Movement in the Wake of Russia's Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine"
• Alice Volfson, Harvard University, "Penning a New World: Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Asia-Africa Writers Conferences"

Sunday, April 20, 2025

9 am -10:30 am: Panel IV

Politics, Power, and Transition: Elite Dynamics and Democratization in Central Asia"

Chair: Dr. Nari Shelekpayev, Assistant Professor, Yale University

Presenters:

• Odil Gafarov, Southern Illinois University, "China’s Global Security Initiative and Its Influence on Central Asia’s Regional Dynamics"
• Lola Peis, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Central Asia, "An Analysis of Cooperation between the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Central Asia – Rational Choice and Neoliberal Institutionalist Perspectives"
• Nafisa Mirzojamshedzoda, University of Fribourg (Switzerland), Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (Germany), "Environmental Change and Challenges of Irrigation Re-scaling in the Fergana Valley"
• Berik Matebay, The University of Texas at Austin, "Recommendations on Supplier and Technology Selection for Kazakhstan’s First Nuclear Power Plant"

9:00-10:00 am:  Special Presentation

• Luke Mackle, Policy Analyst at OECD, "The Structural and Political Determinants of Low-Carbon Development in Eurasia: Challenges and Opportunities for Reform"

12:30-2:20 pm: Panel V

Navigating New Realities: Security, Infrastructure, and Environment in Central Asia

Chair: Yipeng Zhou, PhD Student, University of Michigan

Presenters:

• Isabelle DeSisto, Princeton University, "Family Repression and Political Mobilization Across Regime Types"
• Ikromjon Tuhtasunov, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, "A Little Bit of Democracy Can Go a Long Way for Uzbekistan: Evidence from Participatory Budgeting"
• Miras Orazbek, Nazarbayev University, "Elite Conflict and Regime Survival in an Uncertain Geopolitical Landscape: Case of Institutional Change in Central Asia"
• Malika Toqmadi, University College London, "From Nazarbayev to Tokayev: Western-Educated Elites’ Narratives of Transition"
• Anara Jeenbekova, University of Washington, "The Revival of Turkestan as an Emerging Geopolitical Power: The Use of Rhetoric of Collective Memory by Central Asian Presidents as Part of an Organization of Turkic States"

2:20-2:30 pm: Concluding Remarks

Dr. Nargis Kassenova, Director for Program on Central Asia, Davis Center

Questions? Please do not hesitate to contact event planner Laura A. Sargent at laura_sargent@fas.harvard.edu