Participants

Discussion

Applied research on Russia invites us to view security, insurgency, and strategy from different perspectives. Building on years of work, this roundtable explores reflections on research on Russia. It brings together two authors and two discussants, and a chair, and affords them a platform to engage in interdisciplinary dialogue about ways to conduct scholarly and applied research on contemporary Russia and in post-Soviet space. The roundtable will focus on the sociological, language, and area-based approaches that researchers employ and the evidence-base they use to support their analysis, as set out in The Caucasus Emirate: identity, ideology and insurgency in Russia’s North Caucasus and as developed in Russian strategy in the Middle East and North Africa. The first part of the roundtable will feature the two authors, Dr Youngman and Dr Averre, who will introduce and summarise their work on the Imarat Kavkaz and the armed struggle in the North Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and on Russian Strategy in the Middle East and North Africa since the Arab Spring. The roundtable will draw on politics, sociology, and geography, and suggest ways in which researchers can study the post-Soviet world. Each discussant will follow the authors’ introductory comments – drawing on their own backgrounds in researching Russia’s east and activism in post-Soviet settings – to offer brief reflections on the two monographs, leading into a broader interdisciplinary roundtable discussion involving early-career, mid-career, and applied researchers.