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CURRENT FELLOWS
NORA WILLIAMS
Period of Fellowship: January 6, 2012 - November 6, 2012 Research Project Title: Protest Mobilization in April 2010 Contacts: norawebbwilliams@gmail.com
Nora Webb Williams is a dual Master’s degree candidate in Public Affairs and Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. Her primary research interest is protest mobilization in Bishkek, in particular during the events of April 2010; she intends to conduct a survey to better understand how individuals were motivated to join the collective action. Based out of AUCA, her research is sponsored by a 10-month-long Fulbright grant.
Nora received her Bachelor’s degree in Russian from Middlebury College in 2006. She then joined the United States Peace Corps until the spring of 2009, teaching English for two years as a volunteer in northern Kazakhstan. After the completion of her service in Kazakhstan she spent two months in Liberia with the Peace Corps Response program. Since beginning her studies at Indiana University, Bloomington in the fall of 2009, Nora has served as the president of the International Public Affairs Association and as the chair of the newly-formed Women’s Central Eurasia Network. She has both organized and presented at conferences on the Indiana University, Bloomington campus. Nora speaks varying degrees of Russian, Kazakh, and Uzbek, depending on the day.
ALEXANDER DIENER
Period of Fellowship: September 2011 - May 2012 Research Project Title: Mobilities and Immobilities in Central Eurasia Contacts: diener@ku.edu
Alexander Diener is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Kansas. He is the author of One Homeland or Two?: Nationalization and Transnationalization of Mongolia’s Kazakhs (Stan ford University Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press 2009) and Homeland Conceptions and Ethnic Integration among Kazakhstan's Germans and Koreans (Mellen Press 2004). He is the co-author of Borders: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press forthcoming 2012) and co-editor of Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Nation’s Edge (Rowman & Littlefield 2010) and a special issue of Nationalities Papers entitled Urban Issues in Post-Communist Contexts (2012).
Professor Diener has held research fellowships at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, at the Institute for European, Russian, Eurasian Studies in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. During 2011-2012, he was a Regional Research Fulbright Scholar in Central and South Asia. Professor Diener’s interests include Migration; Transnationalism; Impact of Transportation Infrastructure on Development; Political and Cultural Geography of Islam; Urban Landscape Change; and the Political and Moral Consequences of Territorialization. His articles have been published in a variety of disciplinary and area studies journals, as well as various edited volumes.
Period of fellowship: March 7, 2012 – August 31, 2012
Viktoria Akchurina is a PhD candidate at the School of International Studies, University of Trento (Italy), specializing in state-building in the failed and fragile states. She holds an MA in International Relations: Global Governance and Social Theory from Jacobs University Bremen (Germany), and a Specialist Diploma (with distinction) in International Relations from the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan). She has done research for the UNDP in Bishkek, Centre for European Law and Politics in Bremen, for International Women’s Media Foundation, based in Washington and operating in Germany, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kyrgyz Republic. Viktoria is currently working on a dissertation that examines how securitization of transnational Islamic movements influences the state. In a broader context, this dissertation aims to better understand the nature of the state, transnational threats, and conflict-prevention.
Period of fellowship: April 12 - August 6, 2012 Research Project Title: Contemporary Practices of Islam in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan Contacts: jenniweb@gmail.com
Jennifer Webster is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington. She joins CASI from April to August 2012 to conduct dissertation research pertaining to pilgrimage and shrines in Kyrgyzstan. Her work seeks to understand the evolution of several major shrine locations from the time of the Soviet period to the present day through an analysis of both oral and written sources. Jennifer holds a master’s degree in International Studies—Comparative Religion from the University of Washington and a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Reed College. She has designed and taught several courses on the Silk Road, the early modern Middle East, and pilgrimage and shrines in the Islamic world. |
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© 2006-2011 AUCA Member of AAICU |
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American University of Central Asia |
Tel.: (+ 996 312) 66 11 15 |
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VIKTORIA AKCHURINA 
JENNIFER WEBSTER
