“Moving Central Asian Studies ever further: Orthodox vs Unorthodox approaches”
5-8 June 2025: Tashkent and Samarkand (Uzbekistan)
5-8 June 2025: Tashkent and Samarkand (Uzbekistan)
A Joint Workshop by CARSI / ESCAS / MARMARA University
Marmara University, Istanbul 11-13 October 2024 (deadline 31 July 2024)
The organisers
The European Society for Central Asian Studies, in collaboration with the project CARSI (Central Asian Research on Social Innovation), is planning to hold cosy and friendly workshop at Marmara University in October.
Rationale
This small workshop, and possibly the book project that will result, is intended as a platform for reflecting on how far research on Central Asia and its neighbourhood has gone. We welcome papers with virtually any focus and spacing from contemporary Central Asia’s societal, political, and economic dynamics as long as they propose a novel focus (be this an underexplored topic, an innovative methodology or a novel theorisation of existing phenomena). We are particularly interested in topics and approaches that sound unorthodox or unusual. On the other hand, we are not obsessed with discussing only extremely unorthodox or unusual topics. We rather seek to stimulate a conversation to look at mainstream and alternative topics through some different lenses or frameworks for interpretation.
Expected sessions
This presential (no online presentations) workshop will host a small amount of papers to leave space for discussions and reflections but also socialisation, networking and building up new collaborations across the region. There will be space for social events (i.e. dinner, a walking tour) and training sessions (i.e. publication strategies, fundraising). A specialist will chair each session to promote constructive discussions and offer suggestions
Geographical scope
The geographical focus is also flexible. We are open to comparisons with other regions (as long as Central Asia is in the picture) and to the broader Eurasian region, spacing from Turkey and the Caucasus to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mongolia and Western China in addition to the five Central Asian post-Soviet republics.
Follow-up plans
We plan to share plans for a joint publication (special issue of a journal or edited book, or both if there are enough good papers), and the event shall also be an occasion to discuss possible future workshops in the region.
Submissions
If interested, please send, by 31 July 2024, a 300-word abstract and a short biographical statement to escastudies@protonmail.com. Please cc to: melanie.sadozai@zea.uni-regensburg.de and abel.polese@dcu.ie.
Financial conditions
If you want your accommodation to be covered please mention it in the abstract document. If you have your university funding try to use that one as this will give us a chance to fund some extra people.
We are pleased to announce the International Conference: «Geopolitics, Migrations and Identities in Central Eurasia», a Joint Meeting of the CESS (Central Eurasian Studies Society) and the ESCAS (European Society for Central Asian Studies) – an in-person conference scheduled to take place from January 8 to January 10, 2025 (Wednesday to Friday), at the University of Lisbon, Portugal.
ESCAS 2023 Regional Conference: “Power, people and cultural change in an ever-evolving Central Asia”
21 – 24 September 2023, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Alberica Camerani, Dublin City University
Adrien Fauve, IFEAC, Bishkek
Slavomir Horak, Charles University, Prague
Eugenia Pesci, Aleksanteri Institute, Helsinki
Abel Polese, Dublin City University
Mélanie Sadozaï, George Washington University
Gulmira Sultangalieva, Al-Farabi, Kazakh National University
Sevara Usmanova, University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Tashkent
ESCAS is teaming up with an Erasmus+ Strategic partnership for higher education called “Eurasian Insights” (co-funded by the European Union).
The “Eurasian Insights” conference will be held in Ghent (Belgium) from Wednesday 10 to Friday 12 March 2021. The purposes of the event are threefold:
The call for applications closes on 20 October 2020 (click here to visit the website, discover the draft program and apply)
ESCAS officers 2019-2021
ESCAS Board members:
ESCAS Treasurer:
The new ESCAS Board officers and Board members would like to express deep gratitude to the former ESCAS leadership team who notably managed to organize a wonderful conference in Exeter (June 2019).
ESCAS officers 2017-2019
ESCAS wishes to recognize also the service of the many distinguished scholars who have served on the ESCAS Board in the past.
Please find the final programme of the XVI ESCAS conference online at the conference website (click here for the PDF).
[Russian translation here.]
Statement of concern over the indictment and imprisonment of Professor Andrei V. Kubatin, Institute of Oriental Studies, Tashkent
10 June, 2019
The European Society for Central Asian Studies expresses its deep concern over the indictment and continued imprisonment, and alleged torture of our colleague Andrei V. Kubatin in Uzbekistan. Andrei Kubatin is a well-known scholar, who worked at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent, and who has made a significant contribution to the study of the early history of Uzbekistan.
In December 2017 Andrei Kubatin was convicted of treason and sentenced to 11 years imprisonment (later reduced to six years on appeal).[1] The prosecution alleged that he provided scanned copies of rare books to a foreign scholar. Kubatin maintains that none of the materials involved classified documents, but were copies of publicly available scholarly works from his own library. He maintains his innocence of all charges. International human rights groups and scholarly associations have repeatedly highlighted his case and urged his release.[2] They have also pointed to credible evidence that he was tortured during the initial phase of detention.[3]
The continued imprisonment of Andrei Kubatin threatens to undermine recent important advances made by the Government of Uzbekistan in expanding academic freedom and promoting international academic cooperation. We understand that Andrei Kubatin has been granted an appeal hearing which will take place once again on Wednesday, June 12.
We join others in the scholarly community in calling for Andrei Kubatin’s release.
The ESCAS Board.
[1] http://enews.fergananews.com/news.php?id=3801&mode=snews
[2] See the statement by the Central Eurasian Studies Society, at https://www.centraleurasia.org/2019/kubatin Human Rights Watch, https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/03/08/beyond-samarkand
[3] Human Rights Watch World Report 2019, ‘Uzbekistan’, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/uzbekistan