4th Annual Graduate Student Conference on Central Asia

Friday, May 1, 2026

5:30- 6:00 pm: Welcoming Remarks

6-7:15 pm: Keynote Lecture

• Dr. Sarah Cameron, Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park, "Elusive Water: The Life and Death of Central Asia's Aral Sea"

Saturday, May 2, 2026

9:00-11:00 am: Panel I

Water and Power

Chair: Sarah Hummel, Visiting Professor, Government Department, Harvard University

Presenters:

• Kristina Malysheva, University of Naples “L’Orientale,” “The Soviet River Turn of the Century: The Perebroska Project and the Limits of Soviet Modernization"
• Bita Takrimi, Northwestern University, “Gardens, Canals, and Cotton Fields: Persianate Environmental Thought and Soviet Power in Uzbekistan”
• Nicholas Morrison, University of Maryland, College Park, “An Artery of Socialist Development: The Irtysh-Karaganda Canal in Late Soviet Kazakhstan”
• Nodir Ataev, Queen’s University at Kingston, “Uneven Flows of Water and Power: Local Water Inequalities in the Ak-Suu and Kozu Baglan/Khodzhabakirgan River Basins”
• Nicholas Seay, Ohio State University, “Desert Blowback: Limits of Land and Irrigation in Late-Soviet Tajikistan”

11:15-12:30 pm: Special Presentation 

• Gavin Helf, Adjunct Professor, Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, Georgetown University, "What Comes Next: How to Think About (and Study) Central Asia in the Next Quarter of the XXI Century"

1:30-3:30 pm: Panel II 

People and Land

Chair: Alice Volfson, A.M. Candidate in Regional Studies (REECA), Harvard University

Presenters:

• Zhaina Meirkhan, University of Michigan, “The Forced Migrations of Kazakhs in 20th Century Eurasian Steppe and Beyond.”
• Sylvan Perlmutter, University of Michigan, “After the Uprising: The Temirtau Events, the 'Second Virgin Lands,' and the Stratified Reincorporation of Central Kazakhstan (1953–1964)”
• Iskandar Khodjaev, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, “The Construction of Environmental Risk in Central Asia: Media Agenda-Setting and Public Perceptions of Air Pollution in Tashkent”
• Zhanara Almazbekova, Georgetown University, “Nationalizing Nature: Images of Landscape in the Destalinization-Era Kyrgyz Documentary Cinema”

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

Presenters:

• Jennet Charyyeva, Middlebury Institute of International Studies, "Cooling the Atom in a Drying Region: Water Politics and Nuclear Planning in Kazakhstan”
• Laura Kilbury, University of Massachusetts Boston, “Sacred Subsoils at the Frontier: Islamic Authority and the Governance of Gold in Greater Badakhshan”
• Agzamkhon Niyazkhodjayev, Free University of Berlin, “Cotton, Colonization & Development in Imperial Turkestan”
• Muling He, Columbia Law School, “Between Statute and Steppe: Ambition and Failure in Imperial Industrial Governance Across Siberia and Kazakhstan (1888–1903)”

Sunday, May 3, 2026

9-10:30 am: Panel IV

Geopolitics and Environment

Chair: Dana Masalimova, Visiting Scholar, Davis Center

Presenters:

• Joseph Shumunov, University of Chicago, “Institutionalizing Turkic Geostrategy: Land, Political Ecology, and Policy in the Organization of Turkic States”
• Huseyin Nurlu, University of St Andrews, “Eurasia as the Fulcrum of Global Multipolarity”
• Yousie Kim, Yonsei University, “Energy, Expertise, and Digital Infrastructure: Knowledge-Based Environmental Power in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan"

11-12:30 am: Panel V

Infrastructure and Power

Chair: Josh Hughes, A.M. Candidate in Regional Studies (REECA), Harvard University

• Jiantian Guo, East China Normal University, “Bridging or Dividing? The Role of Transport Infrastructure in Kyrgyzstan’s Post-2010 Ethnic Politics”
• Zitong Yang, Tsinghua University; Davis Center, Harvard University,“Strengthening Oil and Gas Resource Control in Eurasian States: The Political Economy of Bargaining with Western Oil Capital”

11:30 am: Concluding Remarks

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

The central theme of the conference — environment, society, and power in Central Asia — commemorates and celebrates the scholarship of the late Maya K. Peterson, a Davis Center and Harvard alumna (REECA A.M. ’05, Ph.D. ’11), whose work on the region changed the way we understand the intersections of knowledge and power, empire and environment. We are grateful to her mother, Dr. Indira Peterson, for her generous support of this gathering.

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