Approaches and Perspectives for the Caucasus and Central Asia

11 March 09:00

Faculty of History

Benjamin Sharkey, Roman Osharov, Jan Tomek

On 11 March 2024, the Faculty of History hosted a one-day workshop, Approaches and Perspectives for the Caucasus and Central Asia. The workshop was convened by DPhil students Benjamin Sharkey (medieval Central Asia), Roman Osharov (imperial and early Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus) and Jan Tomek (contemporary Central Asia and the Caucasus). The aim of the workshop was to provide a forum for graduate students and early career researchers working on the Caucasus and Central Asia. The participants of the workshop examined approaches to the study of the Caucasus and Central Asia and perspectives on the region in disciplines ranging from History and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies to Area Studies and Political Science, thus fostering cross-disciplinary understanding and collaboration. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre for the study of the History, Languages, and Cultures of Azerbaijan, the Caucasus and Central Asia, based at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, the Faculty of History and Magdalen College.

See programme document here.

Programme

9:00-9:30	Arrival and welcome
9:30-10:30	Panel 1
Chair/Discussant	Dr Michael Shenkar
	Alexandra Slucky, University of York	Culinary Communities of the Silk Roads: an isotopic and archaeobotanical approach to exploring dietary patterns in Medieval Urban Central Asia
	Benjamin Sharkey, University of Oxford	Writing Central Asian history from the perspective of minority faith communities: Central Asian Christians
10:30-10:45	Coffee break
10:45-11:45	Panel 2
Chair/Discussant	Dr Mollie Arbuthnot
	Malika Zehni, IHR and University of Cambridge	Imperial gaze and infectious narratives: recording medical crises in Russian Central Asia
	Roman Osharov, University of Oxford	The Caucasus and Central Asia under Russian rule – transfer of people and knowledge on Russia’s imperial borderlands, 1870-1890
11:45-13:00	Lunch
13:00-14:00	Panel 3
Chair/Discussant	Dr Tamar Koplatadze
	Jonas Löffler, University of Cologne	Between Colonial Rule and Local Self-Empowerment. Western Art Music in Tiflis/Tbilisi around 1900
	Ali Porteous, University of Oxford	‘Ridiculing fellow countrymen and heaping praise upon Europeans’: The Uses and Abuses of Satire in the Azerbaijani Press (1906-1914)
14:00-14:15	Coffee break
14:15-15:15	Panel 4
Chair/Discussant	Dr Alexander Morrison
	Matthias Battis, University of Oxford	Stalinabad 1930: The convergence of scholarship and politics at the Tajik language congress
	Kamila Akhmedjanova, University of Oxford	Central Asian intellectual trends in the 19th century - case study of Ahmad Donish
15:15-15:30	Coffee break
15:30-17:15	Panel 5
Chair/Discussant	Prof Edmund Herzig
	Sofya du Boulay (Omarova), USTA Mentorship Program	Constructing foundational myths in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan
	Abigail Scripka, ZZF Potsdam	Negotiating Traditional Identity in Kazakhstan Post-Independence through Tengrism
	Megi Kartsivadze, University of Oxford	Nation-building and the Legacy of Stalinism in post-Soviet Georgia
	Jan Tomek, University of Oxford	The conceptual standing of Iran and Turkey in the nation-building of the republics of the Caspian-Central Asia region
17:15-17:30	Coffee break
17:30-18:30	Concluding roundtable