Past events
Workshop: Contemporary Spaces of (Greater) Central Asia - 21/03/2017
- Venue: Research Beehive, 2nd Floor Old Library Building
- Start: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 09:30:00 GMT
- End: Wed, 22 Mar 2017 16:30:00 GMT
This international conference, held on March 21-22, 2017 in the Research Beehive, was organised by the Asian Studies Research Group and aimed at postgraduate students and early career researchers in the field of Central Asian Studies. First held in London in 2000, and alternating between Exeter and Newcastle every few years since, this meeting is traditionally held to coincide with Nawruz.
Nawruz is an important festival for contemporary Central Asians, and begins on the first day of spring marked by the vernal equinox – the day when the sun crosses the celestial equator. It’s a celebration of early spring, when the sun begins to regain its strength and overcome the winter’s cold and darkness and when there is a renewal of growth and vigour in nature.
Just as Nawruz injects new life into the natural world, this meeting was intended to inject new energy into the field of (Greater) Central Asian Studies by bringing together the Two Turkestans – Chinese and Post-Soviet. This year, we welcomed UK-based PGRs from Newcastle, Leeds, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Roehampton, Manchester, Sussex, Surrey, London, Glasgow, St. Andrews, Birmingham and Warwick. They were joined by PGRs and ECRs who travelled here from Germany, Australia, China and Japan. We even had the pleasure of hosting an enthusiastic undergraduate student from Durham.
The conference was a great success, with two days of panels including a wide range of current topics including Central Asian economies; insecurity and conflict in (Greater) Central Asia; ethnicity and identity in (Post)-colonial Central Asia; international relations of Central Asia; education in (Greater) Central Asia; and evolving Central Asian societies. The first day ended with a sparkling keynote address from Dr Rachel Harris (SOAS) on Islamic Soundscapes across Central Asia, and a delicious dinner at Alsham Lebanese restaurant (Gallowgate, Newcastle), while Dr Madeleine Reeves (Manchester University) wound up Day Two with a hugely informative workshop on how to ‘publish without perishing’ in the academy today.
View the Nawruz workshop programme here.