Earlier this year, former visiting fellow Kathleen Collins (fall 2000) published the book Politicizing Islam in Central Asia: From the Russian Revolution to the Afghan and Syrian Jihads with Oxford University Press.
The book is described as a sweeping history of Islamism in Central Asia from the Russian Revolution to the present through Soviet-era archival documents, oral histories, and a trove of interviews and focus groups.
"Remarkable in scope and depth, drawing on everything from interviews in the Ferghana Valley to jihadi propaganda in multiple languages, Collins' book is a contender for the definitive work on the rise of militant Islamism in Central Asia," stated Thomas Hegghammer, senior research fellow at Oxford University, in his review of the text.
Collins is associate professor of political science and an affiliate faculty of Islamic studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is a recipient of the national Carnegie Scholar Award and the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship Award. She holds a PhD from Stanford University.