Jasmin Dall'Agnola – författare

Written for early-career scholars still in the planning stages of their research, this book explores some of the challenges researchers face when conducting fieldwork in the former Soviet region. It addresses key questions, including: What difficulties do scholars, especially females, encounter when researching in the region? How does an early-career scholars’ positionality – especially their nationality, ethnicity, and sexuality – contribute to their experiences of inclusion, exclusion, and access while conducting fieldwork? How do early-career scholars navigate issues of personal safety in the field? How do junior academics successfully conduct high-risk research? The book includes contributors from both the region and Western countries, paying particular attention to the ways researchers’ subjectivities shape how they are received in the region, which, in turn, influence how they write about and disseminate their research. The book also explores ways to continue research away from the field through the use of digital methods when physical access is not possible.

Written for early-career scholars still in the planning stages of their research, this book explores some of the challenges researchers face when conducting fieldwork in the former Soviet region. It addresses key questions, including: What difficulties do scholars, especially females, encounter when researching in the region? How does an early-career scholars’ positionality – especially their nationality, ethnicity, and sexuality – contribute to their experiences of inclusion, exclusion, and access while conducting fieldwork? How do early-career scholars navigate issues of personal safety in the field? How do junior academics successfully conduct high-risk research? The book includes contributors from both the region and Western countries, paying particular attention to the ways researchers’ subjectivities shape how they are received in the region, which, in turn, influence how they write about and disseminate their research. The book also explores ways to continue research away from the field through the use of digital methods when physical access is not possible.

Internet and Gender in Kazakhstan offers an empirically rich and theoretically compelling analysis of how the Internet is influencing societal attitudes towards women’s roles and agency in Kazakhstan.Equipped with intimate perspectives from the wider public in five different regions of Kazakhstan, the book conceptualises, theorises, and analyses the relationship between the Internet and gender-related attitudes in Kazakhstan through a decolonial feminist lens. The author argues that digital communication technologies’ effect on societal attitudes towards gender roles and norms in Kazakhstan is conditional on Internet and social media penetration rates, state-led digital censorship, and the ways in which local activists and conservative bloggers use their online presence.The book will be of interest to policy makers and researchers in the field of media studies, gender studies – in particular women’s rights, LGBTQ+, feminist activism, and gender-based violence – and Central Asian studies.

Internet and Gender in Kazakhstan offers an empirically rich and theoretically compelling analysis of how the Internet is influencing societal attitudes towards women’s roles and agency in Kazakhstan.Equipped with intimate perspectives from the wider public in five different regions of Kazakhstan, the book conceptualises, theorises, and analyses the relationship between the Internet and gender-related attitudes in Kazakhstan through a decolonial feminist lens. The author argues that digital communication technologies’ effect on societal attitudes towards gender roles and norms in Kazakhstan is conditional on Internet and social media penetration rates, state-led digital censorship, and the ways in which local activists and conservative bloggers use their online presence.The book will be of interest to policy makers and researchers in the field of media studies, gender studies – in particular women’s rights, LGBTQ+, feminist activism, and gender-based violence – and Central Asian studies.

This book discusses the ongoing challenges of queer visibilities, activism, and knowledge production and demonstrates that there are lessons to be learned from the experiences of queer people in the Caucasus and Central Asia.The idea for this book emerged from a desire to showcase queer scholarship in and on the region, following a panel discussion about the visibility of queer communities in the post-Soviet space at the ASEEES virtual convention in December 2021. The contributions in this book explore questions, including but not limited to: Under what circumstances and conditions does the Internet play a polarizing or liberalizing role in relation to sexual and gender diversities? What accounts for the divergent trajectories of LGBTQ+ rights recognition in different states and regions of the world? How is expanding access to the Internet and persistent government censorship and queerphobia changing LGBTQ+ identities, visibilities, and activism?Via their engagements with the questions outlined above, this book amply demonstrates not just the relevance of scholarship about LGBTQ+ communities and activism for both area studies and queer studies but the ongoing need to interrogate existing political economies of knowledge production.The chapters in this book were originally published in Central Asian Survey and are accompanied by a new Foreword, an updated Introduction, an Epilogue, and an Afterword.

This open access book explores some of the struggles and challenges that researchers and practitioners face when conducting research in the Central Asian research setting. Written for scholars still in the planning stages of their research, it addresses key questions, including: How shall we problematize and reconceptualize the concept of positionality through lenses of local voices from the region? How does practitioners’ and scholars’ positionality contribute to their experiences of inclusion, exclusion, and access to the field? How do scholars navigate issues of personal safety and mental well-being in the more closely monitored societies of Central Asia?The book includes contributors from both Central Asia and Western countries, paying particular attention to the ways researchers’ subjectivity shape how they are received in the region, which, in turn, influences how they write about and disseminate their research. In featuring an even greater variety of voices, this book fills an important gap in the literature on field research and knowledge production in and on Central Asia.