Education

Ph.D., Yale University

Expertise

Russia, Tajikistan, Iran, and Central Asian history

Background

Muriel Atkin is working on a study of the roles of Islam and nationalism in the political conflict in Tajikistan, a Central Asian republic. Her other research interests include Russian policy towards Muslims at home and abroad, and Russian/Soviet relations with Iran. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Russian history and Central Asia.

Email address

matkin@gwu.edu

Selected Publications

• "Tajikistan, from de facto colony to sovereign dependency." Sovereignty after Empire: Comparing the Middle East and Central Asia, S.N. Cummings and R. Hinnebusch, eds. Columbia University Press and Edinburgh University Press, 2011, pp. 304-325
• "Central Asia and the Caucasus from the First World War." New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 5, F. Robinson, ed. Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 517-541.
• Russia and Iran, 1780-1828. 2nd. ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press Press, 2008
• "A President and His Rivals," in Power and Change in Central Asia , S.N. Cummings, ed. (2001)
• "The Ambiguous Position of Women in Tajikistan," in Women in Central Asia , (2001).
• "The Rhetoric of Islamophobia." Central Asia and the Caucasus 1 (2000): 123-132.

Education

Ph.D., Harvard University (1998)

Expertise

Ethnic politics, federalism, democratization, political parties, politics of Eurasia (esp. Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia)

Background

Henry E. Hale (Ph.D. Harvard University 1998), Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, is Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES), its Petrach Program on Ukraine, and the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS Eurasia). His writings focus on issues of ethnicity, democracy, and international integration, and he is the winner of the American Political Science Association's Leon D. Epstein Outstanding Book Award for 2006 and 2007 and the APSA's Qualitative Methods Section's Alexander George Award in 2003.

He spent 2007-2008 on a Fulbright Scholarship in Moscow working on a new book, Great Expectations: The Politics of Regime Change in Eurasia, which he is currently writing up. Prior to joining GW, he taught at Indiana University (2000-2005), the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia (1999), and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (1997-98). He has also served as coordinator of party-building programs at Harvard's Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project (1998-2000) and editor of the Russian Election Watch (1999-2000 and 2003-04).

Henry Hale's Website

http://elliott.gwu.edu/faculty/hale.cfm

Email address

hhale@gwu.edu

Selected Publications

·       The Foundations of Ethnic Politics: Separatism of States and Nations in Eurasia and the World (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

·       Why Not Parties in Russia? Democracy, Federalism and the State (Cambridge University Press, 2006) *winner Leon Epstein Award

·       Co-editor of the book Developments in Russian Politics 7 (Duke University Press, 2010)

·       "Divided We Stand" (World Politics, 2003) *winner APSA's Qualitative Methods Section's Alexander George Award

Education

Ph.D., University of Cambridge

Expertise

South Asian history, Afghanistan, Central Asia, modern imperialism, British imperialism, world history

Background

Before joining GWU, Ben Hopkins was a research fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, for two years. He had also been a visiting professor in the department of International History at the London School of Economics. He received his BSc. in International Relations and History from the LSE and his PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Professor Hopkins works on the modern history of the South Asian subcontinent, with a focus on Afghanistan and British imperialism in the region. He is particularly interested in the political and cultural constellations which emerged during the period of European colonialism. His first book, The Making of Modern Afghanistan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), examines the failed efforts of the British East India Company to construct a modern Afghan state in the early nineteenth century and the consequences of that failure for the region. He is currently working on a co-authored volume entitled Fragments of the Afghan Frontier (Hurst & Co., forthcoming), which analyzes the formation and governance of the Frontier, as well as the everyday lived experiences of its inhabitants. Professor Hopkins has additionally published articles on the slave trade in Central Asia in the nineteenth century, Perso-Afghan boundary disputes and the history of jihad on the North-West Frontier.

Professor Hopkins' research has been supported by the Nuffield Foundation (UK), the British Academy, and the American Institute of Iranian Studies. In 2005, his dissertation won the Senior Rouse Ball prize from Trinity College, Cambridge for scholarly excellence.

Email address

bhopkins@gwu.edu

Selected Publications

• The Making of Modern Afghanistan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
• Fragments of the Afghan Frontier (Hurst & Co., 2012 co-authored with Magnus Marsden)

Education

Ph.D. at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Cultures in Paris

Expertise

Comparative politics and International Relations; Political regimes in Central Asia; Islam, Islamism, and religious minorities in Central Asia; Geopolitics of Central Asia; Military issues in the Central Asian states; Central Asia’s geopolitical positioning toward Russia and South Asia; The rise of Chinese influence and mutual perceptions between China and Central Asia

Background

Sébastien Peyrouse is a Research Professor of International Affairs, The Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES), The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington DC. He is an Associated Scholar with the Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS, Paris), and with the Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior (FRIDE, Madrid) and a member of the Brussels-based EUCAM (Europe-Central Asia Monitoring). He was a Senior Research Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program (Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, 2007-2012), a Research Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington (2006-2007), and a doctoral and postdoctoral Fellow at the French Institute for Central Asia Studies in Tashkent (1998-2000 and 2002-2005).

He has also authored or co-authored seven books on Central Asia in French, and has been translated into Russian, Italian, German and Spanish.

Sébastien Peyrouse's Website

http://www.sebastienpeyrouse.com/

Email address

sebpeyrouse@yahoo.com

Selected Publications

• Turkmenistan. Strategies of Power, Dilemmas of Development (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2011)
• Co-authored The ‘Chinese Question’ in Central Asia. Domestic Order, Social Changes, and the Chinese Factor (London, New York: Hurst, Columbia University Press, February 2012).
• China and India in Central Asia. A new "Great Game"? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, co-edited with Jean-François Huchet, Marlène Laruelle and Bayram Balci)
• Mapping Central Asia: Indian Perceptions and Strategies (Ashgate, 2011, co-edited with Marlène Laruelle)

Education

Ph.D., University of Southern California

Expertise

Development theory, democracy development, media and development, culture and politics, indigenous rights, Central Asia, former Soviet Union, and China

Background

Joining the Elliott School in 2008 as the Director of the International Development Studies program, Professor Roberts is a cultural anthropologist with extensive applied experience in international development work.

Having conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the Uyghur people of Central Asia and China during the 1990s, he has published extensively on this community in scholarly journals and in collected volumes. In addition, he produced a documentary film on the community entitled Waiting for Uighurstan (1996).

In 1998-2000 and 2002-2006, he worked at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Central Asia on democracy programs, designing and managing projects in civil society development, political party assistance, community development, independent media strengthening, and elections assistance.

During the 2006-07 and 2007-08 academic years, Dr. Roberts was a post-doctoral fellow in Central Asian Affairs at Georgetown University. At the same time, he continued to work on development projects for a variety of NGOs and served as a Senior Program Officer at the Center for Civil Society and Governance at the Academy for Educational Development where he managed a peace-building project in Darfur, Sudan and an anti-corruption project in Moldova.

Sean Robert's Blog

http://www.roberts-report.com/

Email address

seanrr@gwu.edu

Selected Publications

• “Doing the Democracy Dance in Kazakhstan: Democracy Development as Cultural Encounter.” Slavic Review Forthcoming (Summer, 2012)
• “Kazakhstan and the United States: Twenty Years of Ambiguous Partnership.” Atlantic Council Issue Brief, 2011
• “What’s Ethnicity Got To Do With It? Healing the Wounds of Uzbek-Kyrgyz Violence in the Ferghana Valley,” PONARS Policy Memo No. 106. Kyrgyzstan: Recovery and Reformation, Policy Perspectives. PONARS Eurasia, August 2009.
• “Imagining Uyghurstan: Re-evaluating the Birth of the Modern Uyghur Nation.” Central Asian Survey. 28(4):361-382 (2009).
• “Saving Democracy Promotion from Short-Term Foreign Policy Interests in Central Asia.” A Century Foundation Report. New York, New York, 2009.
• “Daily Negotiations of Islam in Central Asia: Practicing Religion in the Uyghur Neighborhood of Zarya Vostoka in Almaty, Kazakhstan.” Book chapter in Everyday Life in Central Asia, Past and Present. (Russell Zanca and Jeff Sahadeo, eds.) Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2007.
• “The Dawn of the East: A Uyghur Community Between Central Asia and China.” Book chapter in Situating the Uyghurs. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007.
• “A Land of Borderlands: Implications of Xinjiang’s Trans-Border Interactions.” Book chapter in Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderlands. (S. Frederick Starr, ed.) Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 2004

Education

Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2004)

B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University (1995).

Background

Cory Welt is Associate Director and Professorial Lecturer of International Affairs at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the Elliott School. At IERES, he co-directs the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS Eurasia) and teaches courses on post-Soviet Eurasian politics and security. He has written several articles on conflict resolution, transborder security, and political change, including for Europe-Asia Studies, Demokratizatsiya, and The Nonproliferation Review, and contributed book chapters to The Birth of Modern Georgia (Jones, forthcoming), Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World (Bunce, McFaul, Stoner-Weiss, eds., Cambridge University Press) and America and the World in the Age of Terror (Benjamin, ed., CSIS Press). Dr. Welt was previously associate director (2007-2009) and director (2009) of the Eurasian Strategy Project at Georgetown University and deputy director and fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (2003-2007).

Cory Welt's Homepage
http://home.gwu.edu/~cwelt/

Email address

cwelt@gwu.edu

Selected Publications

• “Missed Opportunities: Revolutionary Violence and Ethnic Compromise in the First Georgian Republic” (draft), for inclusion in The Birth of Modern Georgia: The First Georgian Republic and Its Successors, 1918-2009, ed. Stephen F. Jones (Routledge, forthcoming)
• A More Proactive U.S. Approach to the Georgia Conflicts (with Samuel Charap), Center for American Progress, February 2011
•  “Easing the Crossing: More Permits, Crossing Points and Clearer Rules Are Needed” (with Samuel Charap), Caucasus Security Insight no. 3, International Institute for Strategic Studies, February 2011
• “How to Resolve the Georgia Conflict” (with Samuel Charap), The Moscow Times, December 16, 2010
• Georgia’s Constitutional Reform,” Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst 12, no. 21 (November 10, 2010)
• “A New Approach to the Russia-Georgia Conflict” (with Samuel Charap), Center for American Progress, October 18, 2010
  

-Eurasian and transatlantic security issues (foremost EU, NATO and OSCE policies)

- Democratization in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

- US-Russia-China relations in Central Asia
- Rise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Western responses
- Development of sovereignty and semi-sovereign relations in Eurasia
- Politics surrounding US and Russian military bases abroad
- External promotion of democracy and human rights in a multipolar world

Expertise:

-Politics and Security in Central Asia

-International political economy of Central Asia and the Caucasus

-Business-State relations in the former Soviet Union

-Oil and Gas sector development in Caspian basin

-Political leadership in the former Soviet Union.

Biography

General Interests: 

Political-Social-Cultural Geography

International Relations

Geographic and Social Theory

Specific Interests:

Border Studies

Mobilities and Immobilities

Critical Geopolitics

Geographies of Nationalism & Transnationalism

Geographies of Islam

Expertise:

-Political regimes and democratization processes in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia

-Issues of constitutional development

-Regional geopolitics

-Theories of constitutionalism

-Republican political theory

-Democratic theory

-Institutional theories

Expertise:

Expertise:

Politics of Kyrgyzstan

Water and energy issues in Central Asia

International relations of Central Asia

Expertise:

-International relations,

Central Asian and Caspian regional security,

-Political and social issues in Central Asia

-Geopolitics in Central Asia and the Caspian Region

-Caspian Energy policy

Expertise:

-(In)Security

-Drug control and law enforcement in Central Asia

-Soviet medical history

-Public health care reform

-Harm reduction and HIV prevention among most-at-risk populations

-Security, organized crime, and power institutions in Central Asia

-Police reform

-Private security institution

-Kyrgyzstan politics

-Media landscape in Russia

Biography

Expertise

-Comparative politics

-Central Asian regime change

-Political Islam

-Effects of Information Communication Technology (ICT) on state and society

Biography

-Contemporary forms of conflict

-Civil wars

-Resources and conflict

-Energy security

-Eurasian and European security.

Biography

October 2012

Expertise:

-World global energy,

-Geo-politics and geo-energy

-Energy transitions in Central Asia

-Central Asian energy relations

-Economic geography

-Issues related with oil economies and rentierism.

-Comparative politics

-Political regimes of Central Asia

-Traditional forms of power distribution in Central Asia

-Regional politics

-Intergovernmental organizations in Central Asia (SCO, CSTO)

-Central Asia’s role in the geopolitics between Russia and China.

Biography