Doctoral Student in History
About
I am a Ph.D. student in the History Department. My current scholarly interests revolve around the history of mining in Central Eurasia, with a focus on the political, socio-economic, environmental, and public health implications of resource extraction on the region and beyond. I explore questions related to property relations, resource appropriation, infrastructures, and knowledge production in Eurasian mining zones. More broadly, I am interested in how geopolitical rivalries, state-building, nation-making, environmental processes, and individual stories shaped the history of Eurasian "borderlands."
I am a promoter and practitioner of digital scholarship and am dedicated to building open-access information spaces. I created or co-created several open-access digital resources, including the Digital Handbook for Research on Soviet History, Fontes: Open Access Sources for Ukrainian History, and Caspiana: A Digital Toolbox for Students and Scholars of Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Recent Work:
"Dirty Jobs for 'Clean' Energy: Global Energy Transitions Encounter Industrial Legacies on the Kazakh Steppe," Case Study, UM-SEAS Environmental Justice Library, Gala, December 2023.
"Greener Pastures: China's Clean Energy Engagement in Central Asia," Policy Memo, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, March 2023.