Christine Bichsel

photo

 christine.bichsel@unifr.ch
 +41 26 300 9246
+41 26 300 92 46
 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4966-7925

Biography

Christine Bichsel is a scholar of political geography and environmental history. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Berne. Her research explores how relations of power and violence shape knowledge, infrastructure and the environment. Her geographic areas of focus include Central Asia, Russia and China. Her scientific articles have appeared in Environment and Planning D, Water History and Slavic Review among other journals. A Professor in Human Geography, she teaches courses on political geography and environmental history. Christine Bichsel has also taught and researched at the University of Zürich, and held visiting researcher positions at the National University of Singapore, the University of Melbourne and the University of Cambridge.

Her research has dealt extensively with contemporary and past water issues in Central Asia. Her ethnography of irrigation showed how international peacebuilding initiatives attempted to resolve water conflicts in the Ferghana Valley. Her environmental history of irrigation on the Hungry Steppe revealed the relationships between water, infrastructure and political rule in Soviet Central Asia. Funding for her research was provided by several Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) grants. Christine Bichsel is the author of the book Conflict Transformation in Central Asia: Irrigation Disputes in the Ferghana Valley published with Routledge in 2009. Her next book Heavy Water: The Hungry Steppe Campaign in Soviet Tajikistan, 1958-1979 is under contract with Ohio University Press.

Christine Bichsel’s current research explores the history of Russian and Soviet glaciology in Central Asia. She examines the historical practices, geopolitics and epistemologies of glaciology in Central Asia. Her focus is on how Imperial Russian and Soviet science identified glaciers as scientific objects and established a relationship between glacier changes and time.  Christine Bichsel’s research contributes to unravelling the ideas of time and history that currently inform scientific concepts of climate change and the Anthropocene. Her research is funded by the SNSF project Timescapes of ice: Soviet glacier science in Central Asia, 1950s to 1980s (2021-2025), the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) grant Fedchenko: An Eco-Biography of a Glacier (2023-2025) and the Swiss Polar Institute (SPI) project History of Glacier Science (2024-2026).

Her current research also explores the geographies of science fiction. She focuses on the rising popularity of Chinese science fiction works. She examines how Chinese science fiction takes shape within the fields of power and politics in China, and through the geopolitics of its genre by contesting the current hegemony of European and North American works. She is interested in science fiction’s recent emergence as a crucial mode of thinking at the planetary scale. Christine Bichsel’s research reveals the relationships between fictional speculation, shared imaginary practices and networks of discursive and material circulation through which Chinese science fiction becomes a transcultural phenomenon. Her research is funded by the SNSF project The cultural logistics of Chinese science fiction (2021-2025).

Research and publications

  • Conference contributions
    36 publications

    Archives on thin ice: Methodologies for a cryo-history of Tajikistan
    Christine Bichsel, Living Cryosphere Lab, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, UK (7.10.2024) | Conference

    Predicting weather to harness water. The emergence of hydrometeorology in Central Asia
    Christine Bichsel, Expertise, Scientific Authority, and Governance in the Age of the Anthropocene, 2-4 September 2024, Geneva, Switzerland: (2.9.2024) | Conference

    From the margins of the Third Pole: geopolitics of the glacier-climate linkage
    Christine Bichsel, 4th World Congress of Environmental History, 19-23 August 2024, Oulu, Finland: (21.8.2024) | Conference

    Cross-border and local water disputes
    Christine Bichsel, Training course on Water Diplomacy for teaching staff of Central Asia universities, 5-16 August, Tashkent, Uzbekistan (9.8.2024) | Conference

    On cold ground: Dmitrii L’vovich Ivanov and early glaciology in Russian Turkestan
    Christine Bichsel, Measuring Eurasia. A conference on Survey Sciences at the Edges of Empire, University College Dublin, 26-27 June 2024, Dublin, Ireland: (26.6.2024) | Conference

    Negotiating dryness: Environmental imaginaries of Central Asia’s aridity in the early 20th century
    Katja Doose, Christine Bichsel, Climate Change, empire and the legacies of environmental determinism, 18-19 March 2024, Munich, Germany: (18.3.2024) | Conference

    Central Asia: Environment and Water
    Christine Bichsel, Foreign Service Institute, ASSCA6001 - Central Asia Sub-Regional Overview (21.2.2024) | Conference

    From the margins of the Third Pole: the geopolitics of cryosphere in Tajikistan
    Christine Bichsel, Histories, Cultures, Environments and Politics (HCEP) seminar series, Scott Polar Research Institute, 20 February 2024, Cambridge, UK (20.2.2024) | Conference

  • Publications
    35 publications
  • Research projects

    Myths of equality: the gendered history of science in Central Asia (1870-1970)
    Status: Ongoing

    Start 01.10.2024
    End 30.09.2027
    Funding Other 

    Our project examines the role of gender in the history of science in Central Asia. Situated at the peripheries of the Russian Empire and the USSR, the role of gender in Central Asian scientific communities was particularly complex and multi-layered. In SEQUAL, we investigate the case of field science, i.e., scientific disciplines and research methods that involve the collection and study of data directly in natural environments, rather than in controlled laboratory settings, such as glaciology, meteorology, geology, and geography. We argue that the analysis of field science is of particular relevance to our aim of understanding gender dynamics in scientific communities in Central Asia, as historically field sciences have been and remain dominated by men and framed through masculine discourse and practice. The remoteness and inaccessibility of the mountain areas as the field where the Central Asian scientists worked framed field sciences as a challenging endeavour requiring skills and abilities coded as masculine. This coding of field sciences as masculine provides the rationale for this project via two entry points. First, despite this clear coding, male identities of scientists in Central Asia are rarely made visible and examined as gendered in a way the gendered identities of Western scientists have been interrogated by existing scholarship. SEQUAL argues that the particular situation of male scientists in Central Asia as either the subjects of the Russian Empire or citizens of the Soviet Union added important dimensions to their gendered experience of science, which was shaped by the dominant ideological imperatives. Second, we will recover the role of female scientists in a nuanced way. While Central Asia is often seen as a place where gendered dynamics were particularly conservative, our project challenges this narrative and demonstrates that women, mostly of Slavic origin, frequently participated in carrying out work in, and making significant impact on the field sciences. For women, this meant to embrace the traditional discourse of femininity while taking advantage of the state’s ideological commitment to gender equality. Our project brings the two gendered dimensions together as it explores, in a pioneering way, how these separate scientific identities shaped each other through a complex interplay of relationships in the field, where notions of femininity and masculinity constantly shifted, leading to the gendered subjectivity of knowledge.

    The Alps and Asia / Asia and the Alps: Interconnected mountain regions? 19-20th century
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.06.2024
    End 01.07.2024
    Funding Unifr 

    History of Glacier Science
    Status: Ongoing

    Start 07.05.2024
    End 31.05.2026
    Funding Other 

    In collaboration with the PAMIR research programme, this SPI funded project investigates the history of Soviet glaciology in the Pamir Mountains. The team examines how Soviet scientists produced glaciological knowledge through on-site research stations on the case of Fedchenko Glacier. Fedchenko is an iconic glacier, of key importance for the history of glaciology: it is not only one of the largest glaciers in the world, but also was crucial for Soviet glaciological observations in Central Asia since the 1920s. These observations inform ongoing research on mountain glaciers and effects of climate change today, as Fedchenko feeds the Amu Darya, Central Asia’s biggest river and main source for irrigated agriculture.

    The first scientific observations of the Fedchenko Glacier resulted from an Imperial Russian expedition in 1878 led by V.F. Oshanin. A joint German-Soviet expedition first mapped Fedchenko in 1928 and subsequent Soviet expeditions continued glaciological, hydrological and meteorological research resulting in the building of a hydrometeorological station at Fedchenko Glacier (4169 m) in 1933. The station was operational for almost 60 years, but abandoned in 1992 due to the Tajikistani civil war. The establishment of the Fedchenko station marked an important shift in the modalities of Soviet glaciological observation in the Pamir: from research expeditions to continuous on-site measurements. However, maintenance and provision of the high-altitude Fedchenko research stations was a huge logistical operation, involving the transport of persons, instruments and supplies first by horses and later by helicopter.

    The main objective of the project is to establish the history of Soviet glaciological observations at the Fedchenko Glacier research stations. It thus asks: why and how are Soviet scientific data on Fedchenko Glacier available today? The research methodology of this cluster is based on a mixed-methods approach combining archival research and oral history. It examines the history of glaciological observations through scientific and administrative records, and through personal memories.

    Teaching relief for the spring semester 2024
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.02.2024
    End 30.06.2024
    Funding Unifr 

    Fedchenko: An Eco-Biography of a Glacier
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.10.2023
    End 28.02.2025
    Funding Other 

    Planning and conducting a series of workshops that examine the history of the Fedchenko Glacier, one of the world’s longest nonpolar glaciers located near Pamir, Tajikistan. (12 months)

    The purpose of this application is to pilot an interdisciplinary project on the natural and cultural history of the Fedchenko Glacier (Pamir, Tajikistan), one of the world’s longest glaciers outside the polar regions. Conceived as a contribution to both the environmental humanities and the emerging field of the “ice humanities,” it consists of two goals: 1) to produce a transdisciplinary eco-biography of a uniquely significant glacier that will advance our knowledge of how glaciers came to be understood and offer a cultural perspective on the role of glaciology in climate change studies--subjects hitherto neglected by humanists and humanistic social scientists, and 2) to develop an innovative transdisciplinary approach to studying glaciers. At a time when glaciers are fast disappearing, we return by way of the Fedchenko to the moment of their appearance in both the scientific and cultural imagination.

    Renewal_Scholars at Risk Support for Yuliia Soroka
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.07.2023
    End 30.06.2024
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet
    This application requests an extension by 12 months of the ongoing SNF scholar at risk funding for hosting Ukrainian scholar Dr. Yuliia Soroka at the Geography Unit with the Department of Geosciences at the University of Fribourg. The ongoing funding will end by 30 June 2023. Dr. Soroka is a professor at the Department of Sociology at the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, and a scholar displaced by the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine. The V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University was destroyed early on during the war by the shelling of Kharkiv by the Russian army, and will have to be entirely rebuilt after the end of the war. For the moment, there is no prospect of the war ending in the near future, and it remains unclear when the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University will be able to resume its operation. Moreover, personal safety cannot be guaranteed as the city of Kharkiv is still on the frontline with frequent shelling by the Russian army. After her arrival in Fribourg, Dr. Soroka managed to integrate very quickly into the Department of Geosciences and became an active and much appreciated member of the Human Geography group. We remain committed to supporting Dr. Soroka in this difficult situation and would be very happy to continue hosting her for the extension of this fellowship.

    Political Economy of Astro-Values (PEAV)
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.10.2022
    End 31.03.2023
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet
    This project titled “Political Economy of Astro-Values (PEAV)” aims to analyze how moral, experiential, and economic values shape the imaginations of space exploration in Kazakhstan’s astronomical sites and related spaces connected to public imaginations of outer space. We call “astro-values” the multifaceted economic, imaginative, and moral forces that animate the actors’ everyday practices of engaging with extra-terrestrial spaces and processes. Specifically, PEAV investigates the values that animate the imagination of actors in and around the Fesenkov Institute of Astrophysics (FAI) in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Founded largely by a group of astronomers from European part of USSR who were evacuated during the Second World War in 1941, FAI, today, is part of the Republic of Kazakhstan, located in the former capital Almaty. The Institute mostly conducts non-applied astrophysical research today. My research stay at the University of Fribourg pursues three main overlapping aims: 1) mapping the political economy of public imaginations, assumptions, concerns, and moral judgements that play out in constructing the relations with extraterrestrial objects, processes, and technologies; 2) synthesizing theoretically anthropological and critical economic theories of value with the theories of “hegemony,” and the literature on the social studies of outer space; 3) building on the insights of the previous steps (1 and 2), I will work on a conceptual framework for a new comparative analysis in the social studies of outer space. The primary expected results of this research visit will include the following deliverables: 1) a field report published as a blog entry; 2) application for a postdoctoral research funding; 3) submission of a peer reviewed article; 4) workshop for UniFri students; 5) organization of an international conference panel or workshop with a plan for an edited volume. The project addresses important gaps in the social studies of outer space. First, the absence of engagement with the sociocultural theories of value. Second, the missing link between the scientific laboratory and society. PEAV will advance the understanding of relations between Big Science and society and its embeddedness in the economies of multiple overlapping and conflicting values. By focusing on the experiential, moral, and economic dimensions of values of engaging with outer space, PEAV will show how the local cosmological imaginations and practices reproduce or/and contest hegemonic and counter-hegemonic projects. This will contribute to the scholarship of outer space and make a major impact on the nascent field of science and technology studies in Central Asian. Finally, the project will show important shifts and reconfigurations in the post-Soviet space and its experience of regional and planetary emergencies.

    Knowledge production in/on Central Asia: Forms, purposes and practices
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.07.2022
    End 30.09.2022
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet
    The conference aims to critically assess the past, present and future of knowledge production in and on Central Asia. It draws on contributions from both Central Asia and the Anglophone academia, and seeks to integrate social sciences, cultural, political and environmental sciences. By bridging these often separated scientific debates and domains, it aims to help create more equitable spaces and networks in researching Central Asia, in academia and beyond. Given the well-recognized problems of unequal access to academic opportunities between Central Asian and European/US scholars, the conference strives to include as many participants from Central Asia as possible, to provide a platform for durable exchange and networking. This contact is all the more important, considering the past years' inactivity due to the pandemic, and in light of current, global uncertainties. Now more than ever it is essential to cultivate sustainable cultural and scientific relations with our Central Asian peers. In order to achieve these, it is necessary to reflect on the differences in methods and positioning which have created, and which often perpetuate, these inequalities. The contributions to the conference will be gathered in a peer-reviewed special issue, which aims to insert itself in an increasingly rich, global conversation on these topics.

    Scholars at Risk support for Yuliia Soroka
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.07.2022
    End 30.06.2023
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet
    This application requests funding via the SNF scholar at risk scheme for hosting Ukrainian scholar Dr. Yuliia Soroka at the Geography Unit with the Department of Geosciences at the University of Fribourg for a duration of 12 months starting from May 1st, 2022. Dr. Soroka is a professor at the Department of Sociology at the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, and a scholar displaced by the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine. The V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University was recently destroyed by the ongoing bombing of Kharkiv by the Russian army, and will have to be entirely rebuilt after the end of the war. After taking up care obligations in Mariupol for an elderly parent under extremely difficult conditions due to the Russian siege, Dr. Soroka herself has managed to flee to Western Ukraine, where she is currently supported by her members of her family. Dr. Soroka is committed to take up her research and to pursue her academic career after having recovered from the traumatic experiences of war and escape. We would be very happy to support her in this difficult situation and to host her for this fellowship, thereby hoping to enable her to continue her scientific work and to eventually return to Ukraine.

    From ice to microorganisms and humans: Toward an interdisciplinary understanding of climate change impacts on the Third Pole (PAMIR)
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.02.2022
    End 06.05.2024
    Funding Other 

    Climate-induced changes are dramatic in the high mountains of Asia, but we understand them much less than those in the Arctic or Antarctic. This is despite the importance of these mountains for water supply for societal and environmental use. Supplying water to an otherwise arid region, the Pamir is one of the most important mountain water towers globally. However, the status of the cryosphere in the Pamir region is particularly uncertain due to the lack of measurements since the collapse of the Soviet Union and due to the unique diversity of icy landforms it contains, leading to complex streamflow regimes and geohazards.

    The SPI Flagship Programme PAMIR is an interdisciplinary undertaking to characterize the current state of the Pamir cryosphere to an unprecedented degree, as well as its impacts on ecosystems, hazards and water resources. We will: i) extract an ice core to unlock a climate archive of the past millennium; ii) assess the distribution and state of permafrost; iii) measure the mass balance and accumulation of glaciers at a regional level; iv) establish the link between microbial adaptation and a rapidly changing cryosphere; v) disentangle regional cryospheric hazards by understanding glaciological and permafrost drivers; and finally: vi) unravel the lost history of Pamir cryospheric research. Together, these ambitious scientific objectives will generate important historic and contemporary understanding of this key headwater region, enabling a better understanding of the future of this water tower.

    The Cultural Logistics of Chinese Science Fiction
    Status: Ongoing

    Start 01.04.2021
    End 31.08.2025
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet
    This project examines the recent rise in worldwide popularity of Chinese science fiction (SF) literature. Since the early 2010s, SF from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been rapidly gaining international recognition through translation, endorsements, prestigious awards, and film adaptations. So far, scholarship has sought to explain this phenomenon by analyzing the poetics, aesthetics, and ideology of SF texts. However, an exclusive focus on textuality ignores the discursive and material arrangements fostering the production of Chinese SF. Existing research fails to explain the modalities through which the Chinese party-state articulates and reaffirms its geopolitical hegemony and vision of techno-scientific modernity through SF. This project will shed light on the rise of Chinese SF by examining the relationships between its fictional speculation, shared imaginary practices, and networks of discursive and material circulation. To this aim, we advance “cultural logistics” as a conceptual framework that articulates the material-semiotic nexus between the fictional, discursive, and material aspects of Chinese SF. The project is guided by four objectives: (1) to advance the study of SF by foregrounding how this genre, in the proper context, can foster unique networks of knowledge production and circulation; (2) to strengthen the field of literary geography via a twofold methodology that combines formalist literary analysis with ethnographical insight on the life and “afterlife” of SF beyond the texts; (3) to innovate the notion of “cultural logistics” as a conceptual framework that links the materialist dimension of logistics to the discursive framings and ideological underpinnings that rationalize its operations; and (4) to foreground the geopolitical dimension of the cultural-logistical networks of science fiction by focusing on the Chinese state’s attempts to incorporate SF discourse into its propaganda projects. The main research question asks: Why is Chinese SF particularly suitable for articulating and reinforcing China’s geopolitical aspirations, and how is this genre mobilized to serve this purpose? Three concepts—literary affordances, infrastructure, and cultural geopolitics—are mobilized to answer this research question by using case study research for social inquiry. The first case study will focus on the literary analysis of selected Chinese SF works. The second case study will analyze the discursive and material production of Chinese SF literature. The methodology of the project combines semi-structured interviews, participant observation, virtual ethnography, and archival research. Data will be collected during 15 months of fieldwork in the PRC. The project is intended to advance science fiction studies, literary geography, and the geography of science fiction, while contributing to the social study of logistics and popular geopolitics.

    Timescapes of ice: Soviet glacier science in Central Asia, 1950s-1980s
    Status: Ongoing

    Start 01.03.2021
    End 31.08.2026
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet
    This project researches the history of Soviet glaciology in the Pamir and Tian Shan mountain systems. Pamir and Tian Shan are part of the Third Pole, the Earth’s third-largest ice store next to the Arctic and Antarctic regions and Alaska. The Third Pole experiences a general trend of deglaciation. There is a lack of systematic glaciological ground measurements of the Third Pole. In order to estimate changes in ice cover, and their social and environmental consequences, scientists upscale the only available measurement data to regional and global levels. Yet little is known about why and how this data is available for upscaling today. This is problematic, as the upscaling of historical data has methodological, political and ethical implications. This project examines the social and material practices, geopolitics and epistemology of Soviet glaciology in order to shed light on the history of glaciological measurements in the Pamir and Tian Shan. In particular, it examines Soviet “timescapes of ice”, i.e. the temporal concepts and practices of Soviet glacier science. The project is guided by four objectives. First, the project aims to further the history of physical geography as a science through a study of Soviet glaciology. Second, it aims to advance the environmental history of the Cold War period through a study of Soviet glacier science in Central Asia from the 1950s to the 1980s. Third, it aims to strengthen the connections between environmental history and the history of sciences through conceptual and methodological innovation. Fourth, it aims to advance the interdisciplinary dialogue between the social and natural sciences of climate change through the historical contextualisation of Soviet glacier measurement data. The main research question interrogates how Soviet glacier science in Central Asia during the 1950s to the 1980s produced timescapes of ice. The four concepts of timescapes, disciplinary space, geopolitics, and strata are mobilised to answer this research question. The project adopts case study research as an approach. Case studies will be carried out on the history of glacier science on Abramov (Kyrgyzstan) and Tuyuk-Su glaciers (Kazakhstan). The methodology of the project entails library and archival research. Data collection will involve a total of 26 months of fieldwork in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and the Russian Federation. This project is intended to contribute to the history of physical geography as a science, further the environmental history of the Cold War period, strengthen the connections between environmental history and the history of sciences, and advance the interdisciplinary dialogue between the social and natural sciences of climate change

    Science, fiction and power: rethinking planetarity through post-Earth science fiction from China
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.02.2020
    End 28.02.2021
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet
    This project entails a geography of science fiction (SF) from China to advance the concept of planetarity. Scholars are still struggling to grasp conceptually the scale of climate change. They frequently mobilise the concepts of globality and the Anthropocene to analyse these processes; underplaying, however, their diverse dimensions. As a corrective, I advance the concept of planetarity, which denotes the understanding of Earth as a geological and socio-ecological entity at the planetary scale (Spivak 2003; Gilroy 2005). In so doing, this research corrects human- and Earth-centric assumptions, providing an alternative heuristics and integrating power into the analysis. I research SF literature from China to advance the concept of planetarity. The project has one main and three subsidiary objectives. Its main objective is to advance the concept of planetarity through the analysis of SF from China. The first objective is to innovate the theory of SF by combining and furthering the two literary theories Geocriticism and Ecocriticism. The second objective is to strengthen the analysis of power relations in SF through discourse analysis as methodology. The third objective is to render the concept of planetarity receptive to power through the analysis of SF from China. The project asks one main and two subsidiary research questions: How do post-Earth representations in SF from China advance the concept of planetarity? How does SF from China descriptively produce other-spaces? How does SF from China decentre and defamiliarise Earth? For its theoretical framework, the project combines Geocriticism and Ecocriticism as literary theories. The three concepts planetarity, heterotopia and post-Earth are mobilised for the literary analysis. Methodologically, the project makes use of discourse analysis. Empirical data consist of selected SF works from China and their reception in the country. The project choses one short story and three novels for analysis: ???? [The Wandering Earth] by Liu Cixin ???; ?? [Doomsyear] by He Xi ??; ???? [Return to Charon] by Hao Jingfang ???; and???? [The Ruins of Time] by Bao Shu ??. Further data collection entails a document search in online newspaper and news agency archives, literature review sites and internet fora. Data analysis will be carried out through theoretical and thematic coding aided by the software NVivo. The results of the project will be published as a peer-reviewed article in the journal Environmental Humanities and a special issue in the journal GeoHumanities. The project makes three major contributions. First, it innovates the theory of SF by drawing connections between political geography and literary theory for the analysis of knowledge, power and space in SF. Second, it revitalizes the geography of science fiction through theoretical and empirical insights on the planetary scale in SF, and reinforces the sub-field’s importance within the discipline for the analysis of pressing social and environmental issues. Third, it advances the social sciences of climate change by innovating theorisation of the planetary scale, thereby correcting human- and Earth-centric assumptions, providing an alternative heuristics and integrating power into the analysis.

    The Soviet Steppe - Culture, Environment, Economics and Politics
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.01.2019
    End 31.03.2019
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet
    The steppe represents a vast ecological space, but also a key symbolic reference for Russian imperial and Soviet history. To date, scholars have explored the cultural, political and ecological history of the steppe for the pre-Soviet period (for example Khodarkovsky 2002, Sunderland 2004, Moon 2013, Piancola/Sartori 2013). For the Soviet period, selected works have addressed issues related to the steppe such as agricultural and economic rural development (McCauley 1976, Abashin 2015), the Virgin Lands Campaign in Kazakhstan (Pohl 2013, Saktaganova 2017), Stalinist compulsory sedentarization of nomads and state building (Ohayon 2009, Pianciola 2009, Kindler 2014), resettlement policies and practice (Pohl 2007), land reclamation and irrigation development (Obertreis 2017, Bichsel 2017), and national and international scientific debates (Elie 2015). However, existing scholarship rarely centers on the steppe itself (for an exception drawing on agricultural and environmental history see Elie/Ferret 2018). This conference aims to further explore cultural, environmental, economic and political aspects of the steppe in the Soviet Union (1917-1991). It seeks to answer the following questions: How did the steppe serve as a cultural space for the production of meaning and identity? How did the steppe and its transformation interact with Soviet environmental and economic thinking? How did the steppe provide a geopolitical imaginary for center-periphery relations and Soviet political rule? How did the steppe relate to other ecological spaces, in particular the forest? The conference aims at creating a space for fruitful interdisciplinary discussion. It will analyse the interplay between cultural, political, ecological and economic aspects and to make first attempts to characterize the place of the steppe in Soviet and Eurasian history.

    More-than-earth: Claims to extraplanetary space
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.10.2017
    End 31.01.2018
    Funding Unifr 

    Deconstructing steppe imaginaries in Russian and Soviet artistic and scientific literature from 1890 to 1960
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.10.2016
    End 29.02.2020
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet
    This project studies the imaginaries of the Eurasian steppe in Russian and Soviet artistic and scientific literature from 1890 to 1960. It starts from the assumption that “steppe” is not solely a term describing a particular environment, but also a pivotal idea which has shaped and shapes identities, cultural assumptions, political reasoning and even geopolitical thought. Existing research demonstrates the centrality of the steppe as a key imaginary for Russian political history until the 19th century. However, so far, scholars have neglected to examine the relevance of steppe imaginaries for Russian and Soviet political history in the 20th century, during which the steppe environment underwent large-scale transformation through land reclamation, irrigation development and industrial agriculture. The present project addresses this gap in research. The project seeks to answer the following questions: First of all, how was the steppe perceived and described in Russian and Soviet artistic and scientific literature from 1890 to 1960? Second, how have steppe imaginaries in literature accompanied (enabled, legitimised, questioned) the large-scale transformation of the steppe environment during late Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union? Third, why do (or do not) steppe imaginaries continue to be a key symbol for Russian and Soviet state-building and national identity in the 20th century? These three questions will be answered through the analysis of historically produced texts. The empirical data comprises artistic and scientific literature in Russian language written from 1890 to 1960. The present project makes a contribution to three major academic fields: Political and Historical Geography, Russian and Soviet History, and Literary Criticism.

    Memory in the everyday: practices of remembering and collective farming in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.06.2015
    End 31.12.2018
    Funding Unifr 

    This project examines the constitution of memory and its influence on contemporary everyday
    practices of collective farming in Kyrgyzstan, one of the five nation-states of post-Soviet Central
    Asia. The aim of this study is to explore the role of memory in shaping human-environment
    relations. While existing research on memory in Central Asia offers a historical account of these
    relations, scholars have so far neglected to inquire the importance of memory for present-day
    practices. The present study addresses this gap in research based on an empirical case study of
    collective farming in a rural area of Kyrgyzstan. This case study is well placed to generate insights
    on memory practices, as the trajectory of collective farming in Kyrgyzstan spans from the Soviet to
    the post-Soviet era. At the same time, memory is an often foregrounded, but also highly contested
    theme in post-Soviet societies. In the context of the post-Soviet nation-states, nation building
    processes mostly make recourse to historical narratives and include the reinvention of past
    traditions to specific political purposes. Yet, other forces are also at play, such as the adoption of
    new forms of Islamic practices and narratives of improvement propagated by mainly European and
    US American aid agencies. The study seeks to examine resulting memory practices by innovatively
    combining two methodologies in social sciences; i.e. ethnography and oral history. Not only will it
    offer insights on the importance of memory for human-environment relations in Central Asia, but
    also contribute to methodological and theoretical debates in the fields of Historical Geography and
    Environmental History.

    Territory in Socialist Central Asia. A Political Geography of Soviet Modernity, 1953-1982.
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.02.2010
    End 30.09.2013
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet

    Developing borderlands: Geographical perspectives on development, state and subjectivity at the Central and Southeast Asian borders
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.03.2008
    End 28.02.2009
    Funding Other 

    Border areas are a focus of state and non-state development efforts. For a long time, international aid has sought to improve the living conditions of people in marginalised and disadvantaged border areas of developing countries. Recently, international aid has increasingly focused on transboundary solutions to political, economic or ecological challenges of development. States similarly endeavour to develop their border areas often characterised by geographical marginality, limited presence of state institutions, indigenous populations and a weak socio-economic structure. Perceiving these factors to challenge their physical and ideological constitution, states try to render their territory homogenous and isomorphic in order to govern and rule irrespective of distance from the centre. The intersection of development and political borders marks the starting point of my analysis. I base my project on the assumption that state and non-state development affects forms of governance and people’s sense of who they are in border areas. I thus investigate how development in border areas changes the form of the state and alters subjectivity. For my analysis, I focus on the following three research questions: How and to what extent does development shape subjectivity in border areas? How and to what extent does development change concepts of state territory at the border? And finally, what forms of governance emerge through development in border areas? Political Geography and Development Studies provide me with two suitable theoretical perspectives for this analysis. Political Geography makes available theoretical approaches to study the intersection of political and spatial processes in border areas. Development studies offer conceptualisation of state and non-state efforts to induce social change and improve the human condition. In particular, I will draw on Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, i.e., the techniques and strategies by which a society is rendered governable. This concept has been productively applied in the two fields mentioned. The post-doc project entails a theoretical component with the establishment of a conceptual framework and an empirical component for which I will explore two specific case studies in Central and Southeast Asia. I understand my project as a contribution to the advancement of Political Geography by fruitfully combining two of its hitherto separate scientific fields, namely border studies and development research. I will carry out this project at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, with its extensive experience and proven excellence in researching the Political Geography of Asia.

Teaching and courses

Show in course program