The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Central Asia offers the first comprehensive, cross-disciplinary overview of key issues in Central Asian studies. The 30 chapters by leading and emerging scholars summarise major findings in the field and highlight long-term trends, recent observations and future developments in the region. The handbook features case studies of all five Central Asian republics and is organised thematically in seven sections: history, politics, geography, international relations, political economy, society and culture, and religion
An essential cross-disciplinary reference work, the handbook offers an accessible and easy to understand guide to the core issues permeating the region to enable readers to grasp the fundamental challenges, transformations and themes in contemporary Central Asia. It will be of interest to researchers, academics and students of the region and those working in the field of Area Studies, History, Anthropology, Politics and International Relations.
Speakers:
Rico Isaacs is Associate Professor of Politics in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lincoln. His research interests lay at the intersection of authoritarianism, culture and political theory in post-Soviet states with a particular focus on the Central Asian Republics. He is the author of Film and Identity in Kazakhstan (I.B. Tauris 2018) and Party System Formation in Kazakhstan: Between Formal and Informal Politics (Routledge 2011) and is also currently serving as editor of Central Asian Survey.
Erica Marat is an Associate Professor at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defence University. Dr. Marat’s research focuses on violence, mobilization and security institutions in Eurasia, India, and Mexico. Her recent book, The Politics of Police Reform: Society against the State in Post-Soviet Countries (Oxford University Press 2018), explores conditions in which police reform projects succeed and why they fail in countries with a recent authoritarian past.
Edward Lemon is Research Assistant Professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, Washington DC. His research focuses on security, secularism, counter-extremism and authoritarianism in Central Asia. He is editor of the book Critical Approaches to Security in Central Asia (Routledge, 2018).
Dina Sharipova is Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Graduate School of Public Policy in Nur-Sultan, Republic of Kazakhstan. Her research interests include the issues of identity, identity politics and policies in Central Asia, security issues, as well as formal and informal institutions. She has authored the book State-building in Kazakhstan: Continuity and Transformation of Informal Institutions (2018) and published in Nationalities Papers, Central Asian Survey, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, and others.
Johan Engvall, PhD, is a researcher at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), and a non-resident senior fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program. He is the author of The State as Investment Market: Kyrgyzstan in Comparative Perspective, published by University of Pittsburgh Press.
Galym Zhussipbek is an independent researcher based in Almaty. He is also a faculty member at the Department of Social Sciences, Suleyman Demirel atindagi Universitet in Kaskelen/Almaty where he has courses related to human rights and nationalism. Zhussipbek has a PhD in International Relations (Ankara University, Faculty of Political Science). In recent years he has been engaged in projects related to the discrimination of human rights based on ethnic and religious grounds (a consultant to the Equal Rights Trust), liberalism and Islam, building inclusive institutions (Ministry of Education of Kazakhstan) and development of human rights in post-Soviet geography. in the module Advanced settings.