Research Interest
Urban anthropology, Islamic studies, postcolonial studies and intellectual history.
Alima Bissenova is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the department of Sociology and Anthropology at Nazarbayev University. She obtained her PhD in 2012 at Cornell University, has Bachelor’s degree in Kazakh language and literature from the Karaganda State University and a Master’s in Middle East Studies. In her current research, she investigates the social implications of post-Soviet development through the prism of the changing environment of Kazakhstan’s cities, newly emerging lifestyles and subjectivities, strategies of mobility, and new religious sensitivities in the urban space. She is in the process of completing her first book manuscript Learning to Be Bourgeois: the Rise of the Middle Classes in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan. She is also leading an interdisciplinary project which deals with the issues of coloniality of knowledge, contemporary and historical intellectual networks, knowledge transfers and transformations of cultural capital from generation to generation and from one locality to another.
- The Fortress and the Frontier: Mobility, Culture, and Class in Almaty and Astana
Bissenova, A., 2017 In : Europe-Asia Studies. 69, 4, p. 642 - Давление метрополий и тихий национализм академических практик: The Pressure of Metropoles and the Quiet Nationalism of Academic Practices
Bissenova, A., 2016 In : Ab Imperio. 2016, 4, p. 207 - О проблемах региональных исследований по Центральной Азии…
Bissenova, A., 2016 In : Антропологический Форум. 28, p. 35 - Building a Muslim Nation: The Role of the Central Mosque of Astana
Bissenova, A., 2016 Kazakhstan in the Making: Legitimacy, Symbols, and Social Changes. Lexington Books, p. 211 - The Master Plan of Astana: Between the ‘Art of Government’ and ‘the Art of Being Global’
Bissenova, A., 2014 Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia: Performing Politics. Indiana University, p. 127-148 - The master plan of Asiana: Between the ‘art of government” and the ‘art of being global”
Bissenova, A., 2013 Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia: Performing Politics. Indiana University Press, p. 127-148 - Central Asian Encounters in the Middle East: Nationalism, Islam and postcoloniality in Al-Azhar
Bissenova, A., 2005 In : Religion, State and Society. 33, 3, p. 253-263
Courses:
- Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology
- Anthropology of Development
- Capitalism in Crisis
- Introduction to Eurasia
- Postcolonial Theory and its Application to Eurasia
- Kazakh Culture through Ethnography, Literature, and Film