“Moving Central Asian Studies ever further: Orthodox vs Unorthodox approaches”

5-8 June 2025: Tashkent and Samarkand (Uzbekistan)

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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

• there is no workshop fee
• meals will be provided to all participants
• it is not possible to take care of travel but for those with limited funding we can cover accommodation for 2-3 nights

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.

Further information

ESCAS 2023 Regional Conference: “Power, people and cultural change in an ever-evolving Central Asia”

21 – 24 September 2023, Almaty, Kazakhstan

Further information about the conference

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:

• Firstly, to bring together scholars, students, interested members of the public and policymakers working on (or interested in!) the Central Asian region. The prupose is to interact and strengthen a network of Central Asia-related research and education in Europe.

• Secondly, to show, by examining its identities and historical roots, societal and political dynamics, external interactions, economy and environment, that the Central Asian region is not merely a passive object in abstract geopolitics, but that it also has histories, societies, identities and aspirations of its own.

• Thirdly, examine what (potential) effects and impacts of developments in Central Asia, a region situated right beyond Europe’s eastern rim, have on the EU / Europe in general (and vice-versa).

The call for applications closes on 20 October 2020 (click here to visit the website, discover the draft program and apply)

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