Asli Baykal
Asli Baykal (PhD, Boston University), who will spend the academic year at the Kellogg Institute, is assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Richmond, where she holds a joint appointment in international studies.
She will work on her book manuscript, “Neither Postsocialist Nor Transitioning: The Pressures of Living Under Uncertainty in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan,” which examines the response of Uzbek citizens to sudden changes in roles, responsibilities, power, and authority caused by the Soviet Union’s collapse. The project explores the impact of postsocialist economic inequality and political repression on the negotiation of gender identities, conceptions of community, and spiritual traditions.
Baykal’s research draws upon 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. She hopes to build on this work by conducting research on transnational workers and small traders in Uzbekistan, Turkey, and New York.
Additionally, she plans to develop a new project in her native Turkey, where she sees political polarization as an outgrowth of the ongoing tension between secular and Islamist political movements. She will teach an anthropology course during the spring semester.
