Welcome!
This website provides a window into my academic life as a researcher and teacher of Central Asian and Middle Eastern History and Religion. My training and my work are both deeply interdisciplinary. I earned my PhD (2015) in Central Asian and Middle Eastern Eastern History after completing a Masters of International Studies--Comparative Religion at the University of Washington, Seattle. I have a bachelor's degree in Biology from Reed College.
My research seeks to understand the evolution of several major shrine locations in the Kyrgyz Republic from the Soviet period to the present day through an analysis of oral, written, and visual sources. My research investigates how the deep historical connections between Islamic shrines in the Kyrgyz Republic and its neighboring states continue to shape patterns of social interaction across ethnic and international boundaries and questions the implications of these connections on the way people identify themselves as Muslims. I have designed and taught several courses on the Silk Road, the early modern Middle East, and pilgrimage and shrines in the Islamic world. Curriculum Vitae |