Academic interests
The focus of my PhD is on tracing the emergence and development of environmental issues in countries that were part of the Soviet Union. More specifically, I am interested in how knowledge around environmental problems related to soil such as degradation, pollution and erosion were conceptualized in Soviet science and how these issues and their framing was transformed by different actors and institutions in post-independence period of Central Asian states. I also explore the relationship between the “central” and “peripheral” institutions of knowledge production in that process. To understand this, I work with a broad range of documents primarily in Russian language including archival materials, scientific journals related to environmental and soil science produced during the Soviet government. For the post-independence period I focus on reports and studies of international development organizations, private sector documents as well as national policies that contain different discourses and approaches to the conceptualization and treatment of environmental issues and those specifically related to soil. My research is part of the multidisciplinary Anthropogenic Soils project.
My educational background is in political science and development studies and consequently my research draws from various academic fields including STS, area studies, political ecology and other social sciences that try to understand how knowledge is produced in different social and ideological settings.
Background
Before starting my PhD, I worked in the field of international development and cooperation and contributed to projects and research on Central Asia and countries of the former Soviet Union.
I hold a master's degree in development studies from the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID) with a specialization in climate, resources, and sustainability and a B.A. in political science from the American University of Central Asia (AUCA).