Education
Ph.D. Université de Montréal, History
M.A. EHESS Paris, Social Sciences
M.L. Université Paris 2, Panthéon-Assas, International Law
B.A. Nankai University, Political Science
Interests
Cities, Cultural History, Global & Transnational & Comparative History, Russian Empire and USSR, Opera, Central Asia, Late Soviet & Early Post-Soviet Biopolitics.
Publications
Books and Edited Collections
Visible Power: A Comparative History of Three Capital Cities in Eurasia and the Americas, 1850-2000 (manuscript in progress)
Post-Soviet Flesh: A History of Biopolitics in Contemporary Eurasia (manuscript in progress)
(with Aliki Economides), “Capital Cities in Imperial and Post-Imperial Contexts,” Urban History Review 52, no. 1 (2024), 65-235 (special issue comprising 6 articles).
Evgenii Brusilovskii: memuary s kommentariiami i illustratsiiami (Almaty: Tselinnyi, 2023). English translation in progress.
“The Russian Review at Eighty” (curated online collection comprising 8 articles), The Russian Review (University of Kansas, 2021), russianreview.ku.edu/russian-review-80.
Articles
“Thinking Beyond Soviet Teleologies: Perspectives for the Study of Central Asia,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, Winter 2025, pp. 133-159.
“Borrowed Traditions, Veiled Connections, and Cargo Cults: Opera and Capital Cities, 1600-2020,” Cambridge Opera Journal (accepted, awaiting publication).*
(co-authored with Aliki Economides), “Capital Cities in Imperial and Post-Imperial Contexts: Special Issue Introduction,” Urban History Review 52, no.1 (2024), 65-72.
(co-authored with Aminat Chokobayeva) “Kak byt’ istorikom Tsentralnoi Azii segodnia?,” The Russian Sociological Review 22, no. 1 (2023): 72-81.
“Ottawa and the Making of Canada’s National Identity on the Eve of the Confederation,” Urban History 50, no. 1 (2023), 98-114.*
“Rethinking Transfers of Power and Public Protest in the Soviet Kazakhstan, 1959-1989,” Europe-Asia Studies 74, no. 5 (2022), 857-871.*
“The Man Who Struck the Judge with a Fly Swatter: Justice and Performance in Contemporary Kazakhstan,” Slavic Review 80, no. 2 (2021), 363-382.*
(with Aminat Chokobayeva) “Tsentralnaia Azia mezhdu strategicheskim essentsializmom globalnykh simvolov i takticheskim essentsializmom natsionalnykh narrativov,” The Russian Sociological Review 19, no. 3 (2020), 70-101.
“Whose Master Plan? Kisho Kurokawa and ‘Capital’ Planning in Post-Soviet Astana, 1995-2000,” Planning Perspectives 35, no. 3 (2020), 505-523.*
“Capital Cities, Politics, and Urban Life in Central Asia, 1955 – 2017,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 21, no. 2 (2020), 413-425.
“Govorit’ so stisnutymi zubami: Styd, vlast’ i zhenskoe telo v sovremennom Kazakhstane,” Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie 161, no. 1 (2020), 157-174.*
“Astana as Imperial Project: Kazakhstan and its Wandering Capital City in the Twentieth Century,” Ab Imperio 2018, no. 1 (2018), 157-189.*
“Making Cities Great Again?,” Journal of Urban History 44, no. 3 (2018), 533-538.
“Sur les conflits et au-delà,” Cahiers d’Histoire 34, no. 1 (2017), 5-22.
Fellowships/Awards (since 2018):
Macmillan Center Faculty Research Grant, Yale University, 2024.
Griswold Faculty Research Fund Award, Whitney Humanities Centre, Yale University, 2024.
Griswold Faculty Research Fund Award, Whitney Humanities Centre, Yale University, 2023.
Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2023.
Associate Fellow, British Royal Historical Society (elected in 2022).
Nizami Ganjavi Fellowship for non-British Scholars, Faculty of Asian and Oriental Languages, University of Oxford, 2022.
Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Fellowship for Foreign Faculty, Paris, 2021.
German Historical Institute in Moscow Fellowship, 2021.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre de recherches internationales, Sciences Po Paris, 2018-2019.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Musicology, Università di Roma La Sapienza, 2018.
The 2018 Albert Einstein Fellow / Daimler & Benz Foundation Fellow, Einstein Forum in Potsdam, 2018.
Professional Activities
Member of Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), European Association of Urban History (EAUH) (since 2013)
Manuscript Review
Central Asian Survey, Nationalities Papers, Representations, Ab Imperio, Cahiers d’Histoire, Asian Review of World Histories, Cambridge University Press (since 2018)
Languages
English, French, Italian, Russian, Kazakh (fluency)
Chinese, Portuguese (reading competency)
Courses
Undergraduate
The Master and Margarita: Money, Sex, and Power in Stalin’s USSR
Introduction to Russian & Soviet Music, 1800-1950
Ten Eurasian Cities
Graduate
Central Asian Proseminar
Second Sex After Second World War (with Marijeta Bozovic)