Central Asia at the Crossroads: Powers, Visions, Images of the Future

We are pleased to invite you to a workshop, “Central Asia at the Crossroads: Powers, Visions, Images of the Future,” which will be held on January 12-13 at 08:50, Ülikooli 16-218.

Workshop program

Central Asia is ethnically and linguistically diverse region, a home for Turkic, Iranian, and Mongolian peoples and transit zone for many others. This diversity, along with its nomadic heritage, has shaped both the socio-political structure and the region’s capacity to absorb and transmit cultural influences. Central Asia has historically held immense strategic importance due to its geographic location, diverse populations, and role in regional and global networks. This significance spans from ancient times to the contemporary geopolitical landscape.

This workshop explores Central Asia as a living crossroads – where deep cultural continuities and accelerated state-building intersect with intensifying great-power competition. Bringing together historians, political scientists, anthropologists, economists, and other scholars and practitioners, we examine how the five countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – articulate national agendas while navigating shifting regional and global orders.

By juxtaposing official strategies with lived experience, and macro-geopolitics with micro-level change, the conference asks: How do the republics reconcile nation-building with cross-border interdependence? What forms of cooperation or competition are emerging within Central Asia itself? Which scenarios for the next decade – continuity, fragmentation, or renewed integration – appear most plausible, and on what evidence? What are the specifics of national and group agendas, understandings of the present and images of the future in each of five countries and its societies? How those understandings and images correlate and conflict with each other and external visionaries?

The conference will seek to answer the proposed questions by exploring a broad spectrum of interrelated topics, which include (but are not limited to): the variety of legacies and authorities shaping representations, visions and expectations of Central Asia, its states and societies; the politics of language, religion, and heritage; evolving social contracts; and the everyday practices of belonging across borders and diasporas.

We situate the region’s pivotal strategic role in earlier and contemporary geopolitics – energy and critical minerals, transport corridors, water governance, climate stress, digital infrastructures, and security architectures – amid the competing projects of external actors and the agency of local states and societies. A core theme is the interplay between internal self-images (visions of modernity, sovereignty, and regionalism) and external imaginaries (risk, opportunity, and alignment) that shape policy choices and public expectations.

The meeting aims to generate comparative insights, refine concepts for studying “pivotal regions,” and produce policy-relevant takeaways for governments, civil society, and international partners concerned with the future of Central Asia, its states and relations.

Zoom link