I am a PhD candidate in History at Harvard University, focusing on Soviet Central Asia. My dissertation examines the establishment of Soviet power in Kazakhstan, looking in particular at the first generation of Kazakhs who joined the Communist Party. My research has been supported by the American Councils for International Education, the Fulbright Program, the Social Science Research Council, IREX, and Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
I earned a joint B.A./M.A. in 2010 from Yale University, where I wrote my senior thesis on the Kazakh Alash movement. Before coming to Harvard, I worked on international arbitration cases for an American law firm in Paris. In addition to my academic work at Harvard, I translate for Sławomir Sierakowski of Krytyka Polityczna in publications such as the New York Times.