Roman Osharov

My doctoral research explores the history of the Russian Empire and its borderlands in Central Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, I focus on the formation of the Russian Empire's knowledge of Turkestan, or Russian Central Asia. I examine the work and contributions of orientalists who lived and worked in the region as well as studying it. Many of the sources I am studying involve classical orientalist scholarship, such as ethnographic studies, archaeological reports and translations from Turkic and Persian manuscripts. These rich, often ignored primary sources allow me to scrutinize the Russian Empire’s knowledge of Central Asia, and to compare it with that of other imperial powers like Britain and France.

I began studying Central Asian history in 2018, building on some of my earlier work done while studying at King’s College London.