• Workshop at the University of Amsterdam, late September 2026 (exact date t.b.a)
• Organisers: Sudha Rajagopalan (Amsterdam), Micha Kemper (Amsterdam) and Rashid Gabdulhakov (Groningen)

A recent report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) highlights the growing strategic importance of Central Asia for Europe, driven by the region’s efforts to diversify its partnerships. In seeking to reduce long-standing dependence on Russia and temper China’s role as dominant trading partner, the European Union has invested in closer ties with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The ECFR identifies key domains of cooperation, including energy trade, regional security, and digital connectivity. Yet, despite this strategic prominence, Central Asia remains marginal in academic programming at Dutch universities and, more broadly, in European area studies.

Research on Central Asian societies and politics is often dispersed across panels in conferences where the main focus remains on Russia and, more recently, Ukraine. This marginality is both a strategic and intellectual loss. Following the “inaugural” Central Asia–EU summit in April 2025, this is a timely moment for an academic workshop at the University of Amsterdam focused singularly on Central Asian countries. The workshop aims to:

• place Central Asia at the centre of academic and policy-relevant discussion;
• diversify subject areas beyond high politics and security;
• shift attention to society, culture, and everyday practices;
• bring together scholars working on Central Asia across area studies, post-socialist studies, and adjacent fields in the humanities and social sciences.

We invite contributions that examine how civil society actors and citizens in Central Asia engage with social and cultural issues in ways that shape, reflect, or challenge our understanding of the region. More generally, the workshop foregrounds issues of public interest in Central Asia, ranging from education and migration to media and everyday governance, while remaining attentive to the broader geopolitical and economic context.

The workshop is designed as an interdisciplinary forum, bringing together:

• Area studies scholars (especially Central Asian and Eurasian studies);
• Researchers in post-socialist and post-Soviet studies;
• Political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and media/communication scholars;
• Policy-oriented researchers and practitioners working on EU–Central Asia relations.

We encourage dialogue across disciplinary boundaries, and welcome both empirically grounded and theoretically informed contributions. Participants are invited to engage with any of the following themes:

Civil society and governance

• Forms of civic engagement, activism, and associational life in Central Asia;
• Local responses to social change, authoritarianism, and political reform;
• Interactions between state institutions, international donors (including EU actors) and local civil society.

Cultural memory and political futures

• Cultural production (literature, film, art, popular culture) and public memory
• Gender, sexuality, and other intersectional perspectives on social transformation and political futures
• Memory, nostalgia, and post-Soviet/post-socialist narratives.

Education and labour mobility

• Academic mobility between Central Asia and Europe;
• Migration, diasporas, and transnational family and social networks;
• Labour migration to and from Central Asia (including to EU countries) and precarity.

Digitalisation and digital media practices

• Disinformation and information manipulation in Central Asian media spaces;
• Digital inequalities (urban–rural, gendered, generational, linguistic) and questions of access and inclusion;
• Digital practices of citizens and civil society: online activism, community building, and everyday uses of social media and messaging apps.

Decoloniality and questions of race

• Histories of Soviet colonialism, post-Soviet afterlives and racialisation in Central Asia;
• Decolonial critiques and knowledge production in universities and museums;
• Decolonial networks and the building of solidarities between Central Asian, adjacent post-socialist societies and other post-colonies.