International Associate Research Fellows

In the summer of 2018, I’ve embarked on my archival research trip to Russia and Central Asia pertaining to the future dissertation writing. In fact, it was a preliminary data gathering and this fall semester I am planning to defend my prospectus. The trip was made possible by the generous support of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation. I am indebted to the Higher school of Economics (HSE) at both Saint Petersburg and Moscow campuses for taking care of all the administrative issues that allowed me to efficiently work in several archives and libraries in these two cities between June and July of 2018. Additionally, I am immensely grateful to HSE for the unique opportunity to attend the international summer school hosted by the St. Petersburg campus of the HSE and titled Imperial History in a Global Age 1870-1920. Participation in this summer school allowed me to be in direct conversation with the leading scholars in the field, as well as to interact with graduate students from Russian and German universities. One of the modules of the seminar was a presentation of dissertation projects, which became a mock dissertation prospectus defense for me. The feedback from the leading scholars in the field that I received will help me strengthen my dissertation prospectus. Finally, the Boundaries of History seminar series served as a wonderful opportunity to meet historians of various backgrounds and to be exposed to various research schools and methodological approaches.
     The archival materials which I collected over the course of this research trip served as the basis for a conference paper, Displaced Soviet Children during the Great Patriotic War in Uzbek SSR: Experiences of Evacuation that is going to be delivered at the 60th Annual Association for Eastern European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) Convention in Boston in December of this year. The geographical focus of my dissertation project, which I am pursuing under the guidance of Professor Marina Mogilner (University of Illinois at Chicago), is on the Soviet “East”, and it starts with the mass evacuation and relocation of people from European regions of the USSR to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Uzbekistan after the outbreak of WWII. One of the aims of the project is to analyze the influence of this “discovery” of Central Asia on the postwar Soviet cultural and social order in general. By suggesting a multi-directional approach and engaging both Russian-language and local Uzbek and Karakalpak language sources, I plan to challenge the existing historiographic pattern of stressing the experience of just one – “European Russian” participant of this encounter. — Зухра Касимова о программе Международных ассоциированных сотрудников

For seven months in 2018, I was fortunate enough to be an International Associate Research Fellow at HSE St Petersburg’s History department as I conducted archival research for my PhD dissertation. I am based at the University of California, Irvine, working on a project that addresses cultures of military death in the late Imperial and early Soviet eras. This affiliation with HSE enable me to broaden my intellectual horizons considerably; conversations about the New Imperial History and the Research Seminar on “Boundaries of History” were particular highlights. Moreover, I found the faculty and staff at HSE to not only be generous with their academic expertise, professional contacts, and institutional knowledge of the archives, but incredibly friendly and welcoming besides. — Оливия Хамфри о программе Международных ассоциированных сотрудников

In the summer of 2017, I was extremely fortunate to be able to undertake an archival research trip as part of my preliminary dissertation research. The trip was made possible by the generous support of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation and the Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg’s International Associate Visiting Scholar Program. My dissertation project, which I am pursuing at the University of the Illinois at Chicago (UIC) under the guidance of Professor Marina Mogilner, examines the study of the archaeology of nomadic cultures in late-imperial and early-Soviet Russia, and the interplay on multiple scientific, discursive, cultural, and aesthetic levels between archaeology and nomadism in the Russian Imperial Space. Participating in the Associate Visiting Scholar program at HSE made it possible for me to conduct research in Saint Petersburg, Omsk, Tomsk, and Moscow in the summer of 2017. Additionally, I am extremely grateful to HSE for the unique opportunity to participate in the international workshop titled “The Imperial Revolution of 1917: Post-Imperial Imaginaries and Revolutionary Politics in the Context of Diversity.” Participation in this seminar allowed me not only to hear presentations from leading scholars in the field of New Imperial History, but also to network with young graduate students like myself on a professional level. I am indebted and deeply thankful to the staff of the Saint Petersburg campus of the Higher School of Economics for helping to make this research trip successful in terms of both enabling my archival research and also in fostering scholarly cooperation on the international level. — Исмаил Бияшев о программе Международных ассоциированных сотрудников