Lectures at SOAS University and USTA Mentorship programme

I had another couple of brilliant teaching adventures this week, and the previous one. Last Friday, I taught the introductory seminar for Dr Bhavna Dave’s module “Central Asia and the Caucasus: Politics and International Relations” at SOAS University of London, in my new Department, which I will be joining next week. The seminar was about traditional and critical approaches to the geopolitics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. It was a fantastic opportunity for an in-depth discussion with very prepared Master’s students at SOAS. I hope it’s the first of many!

Today, I gave a seminar for the USTA mentorship programme for Central Asian scholars on Everyday Political Economy. As part of the seminar, I discussed how the discipline of political economy has approached Central Asia, and how critical political economy and the everyday lens are used to problematise the mainstream literature. So many known faces and amazing researchers were there: Nazerke Mukhamediya, Binazir Yusupova, Hikoyat Salimova, Gulzat Botoeva, and many other colleagues I met for the first time. What a treat!