NU SSH hosted the 1st Annual Eurasian Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences
The 1st Annual Eurasian Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences with the conference theme “Tradition and Innovation in Eurasia” was convened by the School of Humanities and Sciences of Nazarbayev University on 24-26 November 2022.
The opening session was a conversation which took place between Nina Khrushcheva, great-granddaughter of the former First Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR (and herself a professor of international relations at The New School in New York City) and Maria Rybakova, Assistant professor in the Department of Languages, Linguistics, and Literatures at Nazarbayev University. The second day’s keynote speaker was Professor Emeritus Nazif Shahrani of Indiana University Bloomington who spoke on “The Makings/Inventions of National Identities in Post-Independence Central Asia”. The third day’s keynote speaker was Associate Professor Caress Schenk of the NU Department of Political Science and International Relations who spoke on “Process or Event: Migration Pressures in the Context of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine”.
There were altogether six panels:
- Kazakh Linguistics
- Languages of Eurasia
- Ethics and Public Opinion in Central Asia
- Almaty and Astana – Past and Present
- Security and Geopolitics
- Soviet and the Post-Soviet Eurasia
Over 40 faculty and students participated in the conference as presenters, discussants, and chairs. Participants were from the Departments of Economics; History, Philosophy and Religious Studies; Kazakh Language and Turkic Studies; Languages, Linguistics, and Literatures; Political Sciences and International Relations; and Sociology and Anthropology. There were also participants from other universities in the United States and Astana.
The NU faculty in humanities and social sciences hope that this inaugural conference will be the first in an annual event entitled the “Eurasian Conference in Humanities and Social Sciences”.
