RESEARCH
THE UNTAMED RUIN: BETWEEN DREAM AND REALITY IN RUSSIA'S COLONIAL FRONTIER
My dissertation thesis engages environmental, (post)socialist, and Indigenous studies to critically examine the Far Eastern Hectare, Russia’s settler colonial ambition in Asia. Drawing on 26 months of ethnographic and archival research in Pacific Russia, my research intervenes in debates on environmental afterlives of industrialization, by investigating a uniquely post-socialist experiment—a land development project unfolding against the backdrop of the Soviet empire's remains.
My main theoretical intervention lies with the concept of wilderness. Contrary to earlier writings that critiqued the idea of wilderness, I show that wilderness is also a material process shaped by complex environmental and political histories. I examine the popular image of Russia’s Far East as an untamed frontier ripe for resettlement and development to argue that this state-driven colonial narrative is sustained by the fact that local ecologies have slipped into a feral state. These emerging ecologies read by outsiders as “wild” are the result of century-long state policies that, whether intentional or not, displaced rural, predominantly Indigenous, populations from their land.
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Rather than presenting an unlimited, open potential, the Far Eastern Hectare is profoundly constrained by these ecologies. By ethnographically examining a settler colonial project in the making, my research shows that such initiatives are not merely imposed on a passive, receptive “nature.” Instead, local ecologies—products of longstanding human and non-human interactions—create points of ‘friction’ that lead to unexpected limitations and opportunities in the project’s realization. These dynamics not only challenge the viability of settler colonial ambitions but also reveal how colonial projects are reshaped by their environmental contexts.
EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE ALL AT ONCE
My next project examines the enduring environmental impact of the Soviet nuclear arms race on the Indigenous pastoralists of northeastern Kazakhstan. The Semipalatinsk nuclear test site had a troubling and secretive history that seemingly ended in 1989, when Kazakhstan's newly elected President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, officially closed the site. Thirty-five years later, the country remains entangled in this contentious heritage, caught between the demands of expanding its nuclear program, diversifying the regional economy, and containing environmental pollution. With the recent plans to repurpose the test site as a nuclear waste storage facility and convert the adjacent land into agricultural use, the rural, marginalized pastoralists—whose livelihoods have long depended on the land sacrificed for past military and present economic needs—find themselves once again at the heart of competing national interests. How do local farmers engaged in animal husbandry navigate the reality of living amidst radioactive ruins? How do their interactions with the land and animals evolve as they contend with the constraints of neoliberal restructuring, state development projects, and new agricultural pressures? Finally, what does the prospect of repurposing the test site as a nuclear waste storage facility reveal about the afterlives of atomic development? Building on my previous research in the region, I situate these questions at the intersection of political ecology, Soviet environmental history, and the studies of (post)socialist land use and tenure.
THE INEQUITIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT
In 2024, I joined a collective research project at Drake University investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the personal and professional well-being of working mothers in the United States. This study focuses on lower-income mothers with children aged 4 to 12 years who either quit or lost their jobs during the pandemic. It uses an intersectional approach to examine the conditions under which lower-income mothers left the workforce during the pandemic, the repercussions of those exits for mothers’ subsequent job-seeking priorities and behaviors, the various obstacles and tradeoffs influencing their efforts to return to work, and the role of personal and family resources and the broader policy environment in shaping mothers’ ongoing paid and unpaid labor.
As the project’s interviewer and analyst, I recruited participants, conducted interviews, took fieldnotes, and analyzed the data. A standalone article investigating how the pandemic has altered parents' perceptions and attitudes toward the school system is currently in preparation. The article analyzes shifts in parents’ expectations, concerns, and engagement with educational institutions as a direct response to the challenges posed by the pandemic. By focusing on the experiences of low-income mothers, the article seeks to highlight the intersection of socioeconomic status, educational access, and the evolving landscape of parental involvement in education.