Affiliated Faculty, Researchers and Professional Staff

The Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center is proud of its faculty and associates, whose diverse set of research interests stretch from Central Europe to the far corners of East Asia. This information page lists individuals affliated with the Center. Where possible, clicking on the individual's name links to their department or personal webpage. A summary of biographical information including educational background, research interests, and contact information is also provided.

[College of Arts & Sciences] [Professional Schools]
[Independent Scholars & Project Associates]

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Department of Anthropology

K. Anne Pyburn, Professor; Professor of Gender Studies; Adjunct Professor, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies; Director, Center for Archaeology in the Public Interest. PhD, University of Arizona, 1988. Research interests include pre-historic systems of human organization.

M. Nazif Shahrani, Professor; Professor of Central Eurasian Studies; Chair, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. PhD, University of Washington, 1976. Research interests include Islam and politics in Muslim societies of the Middle East and former Soviet Central Asia.

Department of Applied Linguistics/TESOL

Bill Johnston, Associate Professor. Director of Polish Studies Center, PhD University of Hawaii, 1995. Research interests include translations of modern Polish literature.

Center for the Study of Global Change

David E. Albright, Senior Fellow. MA, Indiana University, 1994. Research interests include international security.

Department of Central Eurasian Studies

Christopher Atwood, Associate Professor. Chair, Department of Central Eurasian Studies. PhD, Indiana University, 1994. Research interests include Mongolian history; Sino-Soviet relations and Mongolia.

Ilhan Basgöz, Professor Emeritus; Professor Emeritus of Folklore. Ph.D, University of Ankara, 1949. Research interests include oral literature, epics, romances; Asia, Near East, and Turkey.

Zaure Batayeva, Associate Instructor. MA, Almaty State University, 1995. Research interests include Kazkah folklore, compositional styles in fiction.

Gustav Bayerle, Professor Emeritus. Ph.D, Columbia University, 1966. Rresearch interests include sixteenth and seventeenth century Ottoman history, Hungarian history, and Ottoman philology.

Christopher I. Beckwith, Professor. Ph.D, Indiana University, 1977. Research interests include the ethnolinguistic history of Central and Eastern Eurasia, historical linguistics, typological linguistics, computational linguistics, and theoretical phonology.

Gardner Bovingdon, Assistant Professor; Adjunct Assistant Professor of Political Science; Assistant Professor in East Asian Languages and Cultures. Ph.D, Cornell University, 2002. Research interests include politics in contemporary Xinjiang; history of modern Xinjiang; historiography in China; and nationalism and ethnic conflict.

Yuri Bregel, Professor Emeritus. Ph.D, Institute of Oriental Studies at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Research interests include the history of Islamic Central Asia.

Jamsheed Choksy, Professor; Professor of History; Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies. Ph.D, Harvard, 1991. Research interests include the religions of Central Asia, the Near East, and South Asia, with a special focus on Iranian studies.

Assistant Professor. Ph.D, Harvard, 2007. Research interests include the history and historiography of the Ottoman Empire; dissident movements, rebellions, succession struggles; socioeconomic history of the Ottoman Empire; feudalism; agrarian societies of the late middle ages and the early modern era.

Shahyar Daneshgar, Senior Lecturer; Director, Silk Road Ensemble. Ph.D, Indiana University, 1995. Research interests include languages and cultures of Central Eurasia and the Middle East; Iranian and Turkic linguistic and cultural contacts; ethnomusicology and the musical practices of the peoples of the Central Eurasia and the Middle East.

Devin DeWeese, Professor, PhD, Indiana University, 1985. Research interests include Islam in Central Asia.

William Fierman, Professor, PhD, Harvard University, 1979. Director, Inner Asian & Uralic National Resource Center. Research interests include Language policy in Central Asia.

Malik Hodjaev, John D. Soper Lecturer, BA Samarkand State Pedagogical Institute, 1972; Cert. Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, 1980. Languages include Uzbek, Tajik, Russian and English.

Lynn Hooker, Assistant Professor, PhD, University of Chicago. Research interests include Modernism Meets Nationalism: Bela Bartok and the Musical Life of pre-World War I Budapest.

György Kara, Professor. PhD, ELTE University of Budapest, 1961; Doctor of Philology, Leningrad, 1975. Research interests include Mongol and Inner Asian studies, languages and cultures including Old Uygur, Tibetan, Manchu, Evenki, Khitan and Altaic philology.

Umida Khikmatillaeva, Visiting Assistant Professor. Ph.D., Tashkent State University, 1996. Research interests include Turkic language instruction and methodology, Turkic grammar, Turkic literature, ethnolinguistics, and computational linguistics.

Nasrullo Khodjaerov, Visiting Professor. PhD, Institute of Tajik Language and Literature, 2000. Research interests include language teaching methodology, Persian and Tajik languages and literature, and computational linguistics.

Piibi-Kai Kivik, Associate Instructor, MA, Tartu University (Estonia), 1997, English Language; M.Phil., Cambridge University (UK), 1997, English and Applied Linguistics.

Edward Lazzerini, Visiting Professor; Associate Director of the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center; Adjunct Professor of History. Ph.D, University of Washington, 1973. Research interests include intellectual patterns and practices in the Volga-Ural region prior to 1931; commentary traditions and modernity; Crimea under Russian rule; and comparative empires (Russian, Chinese, and Ottoman).

Paul Losensky, Associate Professor; Associate Professor Comparative Literature; Adjunct Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.s Ph.D, University of Chicago, 1993. Research interests include classical Persian literature of the 16th and 17th centuries in Iran, India, and Central Asia and in biographical writing devoted to poets and to Sufi mystics.

Fatima Moldashova, Associate Instructor. Degree, West Kazakhstan Law Institute.

Larry Moses, Associate Professor Emeritus. Ph.D, Indiana University, 1972. Research interests include Mongol history.

Gulnisa Nazarova, Visiting Lecturer. Postgraduate Degree, Institute of Uyghurology, Academy of Sciences, Kazakhstan, 1992. Research interests include Indo-German and Non-Indo-German languages and literary communications.

Gedun Rabsal, Lecturer. Pharchin Rabjam, Gaden Jangtse College, India, 1992. Research interests include the application of modern pedagological theory towards the teaching of Tibetan.

Toivo Raun, Professor; Adjunct Professor of History. PhD, Princeton University, 1969. Research interests include Baltic and Finnish history.

Ron Sela, Assistant Professor. Ph.D., Indiana University, 2004. Research interests include the history and historiography of Islamic Central Asia in the 16th-19th centuries; political and cultural self-representation in Central Asian sources, and Central Asia’s role in the history of the Islamic world.

Kemal Silay, Professor; Professor, Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies. Ph.D, Indiana University, 1993. Research interests include Ottoman philology, Ottoman court poetry, feminisms in Turkey and the Middle East, Turkish popular culture, Turkish oral literature, postmodernism, and social informatics.

Denis Sinor, Distinguished Professor Emeritus; Professor Emeritus of History - Rresearch interests include medieval history of Central Eurasia; early Hungarian history; and comparative Uralic and Altaic Linguistics.

Elliot Sperling, Associate Professor. Ph.D, Indiana University, 1983. Research interests include Tibetan history and Sino-Tibetan relations.

Mihaly Szegedy-Maszák, Professor; Adjunct Professor of Comparative Literature, PhD, Eötvös Loránd University, 1967. Research interests include Hungarian literature and culture.

Valeria Varga, Visiting Lecturer, MA in Hungarian, Russian, and English, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary.

Department of Economics

Michael Alexeev, Associate Professor, PhD, Duke University, 1984. Research interests include Soviet-type economies in transition.

Michael Kaganovich, Associate Professor, PhD, Moscow State University, 1985. Research interests include models of economic transition.

Martin Spechler, Professor of Economics, PhD, Harvard University, 1971. Research interests include Soviet-type economies, economies in transition, and comparative economics.

Folklore Institute

Henry Glassie, Professor; Co-Director of Turkish Studies. Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1969. Research interests include Folk art and material culture; historical approaches; the United States, Ireland, Turkey, and Bangladesh.

Department of Geography

Roman Zlotin, Senior Lecturer, PhD, Academy of Sciences (Moscow), 1970. Research interests include Soviet and Russian geography and the environment.

Department of History

Maria Bucur-Deckard, Associate Professor, PhD, University of Illinois, 1997. Research interests include East European and Romanian history; gender studies. Ben Eklof, Professor, PhD, Princeton University, 1977. Research interest include History of Russian and Soviet education.

Matthias Lehmann, Assistant Professor, PhD, Freie Universitat Berlin, 2002. Research interest include Ottoman History and Sephardic Studies.

Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Cigdem Balim, Senior Lecturer. PhD, University of Washington, 1978. Research interests include descriptive grammars of the Turkic languages of the world; language planning and language policies in Europe, Balkans, Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center

Kasia Rydel-Johnston, Assistant Director. MA, Jagiellonian University, 1978; 1982. Research interests include second language acquisition.

Beatrix Burghardt, Language Coordinator. MA, MS, Attila József University, 1994. Research interests include second language acquisition.

Center for the Languages of the Central Asian Region

Nigora Azimova, Language Materials Developer. MA, Indiana University, 2006. Research interests include applied linguistics.

Department of Political Science

Jack Bielasiak, Professor, PhD, Cornell University, 1975. Research interests include post-Communist and East European politics.

Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

Dodona Kiziria, Associate Professor, PhD, Yale University, 1979. Russian and East European film studies, Russian literature, Georgian language.

Department of Telecommunications

Herbert A. Terry, Associate Professor, PhD University of Minnesota, 1976. Fulbright in Russia, 1998/9.

PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS

Kelley School of Business

Marjorie A. Lyles, Professor. Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1977. Research interests include international itrategy, joint ventures and alliances, organizational learning and cooperative alliances, and performance of foreign direct investment projects.

Paul Marer, Professor Emeritus. PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1968. Research interests include Eastern and Central Europe.

School of Education

Martha Nyikos, Associate Professor; Director, Foreign Language & ESL Education Program. PhD, Purdue University, 1987. Research interests include sociocultural approaches to strategies-based language learning, models for professional teacher development and teacher resistance to change, and family language maintenance in the diaspora.

Margaret Sutton, Associate Professor; Faculty Affiliate, Department of Gender Studies. PhD, Stanford University, 1991. Research interests include democratization and civic education, gender and education, and policy as practice.

School of Journalism

Owen V. Johnson, Associate Professor. PhD, History, University of Michigan, 1978. Research interests include the history of mass media in East-Central Europe.

Christine Ogan, Professor. PhD, University of North Carolina, 1976. Research interests include communication technologies and international communication.

School of Law

Joseph Hoffmann, Professor. JD, University of Washington, 1984. Research interests include the death penalty, habeas corpus, and federal criminal law.

David C. Williams, Professor. JD, Harvard University, 1985. Research interests include constitutional law, Native American governance, and the second amendment.

School of Library and Information Science/Main Library

Mark Taylor Day, Librarian. MA, Indiana University, 1982. Research interests include the critical historical, rhetorical, and social scientific study of management rhetoric in relationship to the social organization of knowledge work in academic libraries.

Jacobs School of Music

Mary Goetze, Professor. PhD, University of Colorado, 1985. Research interests include Central Eurasian folk music, history and culture.

School of Public and Environmental Affairs

Matthew R. Auer, Associate Professor. PhD, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 1995. Research interests include environmental policy and management problems with an international focus: international environmental assistance, comparative industrial environmental policy, international policies governing forests and forestry. Randall Baker, Professor. PhD, London University, 1968. Research interests include comparative study on different perspectives regarding the way problems are perceived and handled, historical perspectives in the analysis of contemporary environmental and policy problems. Vicky Meretsky, Associate Professor. PhD, University of Arizona, 1995. Research interests include ecology and management of rare species, biocomplexity, and landscape-level species and community conservation.

John L. Mikesell, Professor; Managing Director, Professional Graduate Program Office; Director, Master of Public Affairs Program. PhD, University of Illinois (Urbana), 1969. Research interests include US state and local government finance, and budgeting.

Independent Scholars and Project Associates

Chris Foley, Senior Associate, Office of Admissions. MFA, Indiana University, 1997. Research interests include International Education, Enrollment, Management, and Kyrgyz Education. Ruth Meserve, Independent Scholar. PhD, Indiana University, 1987. Research interests include Mongolian livestock breeding, traditional Mongolian medicine, traditional nomadic culture. Suzan Oezel, Independent Scholar.

Mary Thurlkill, Assistant Professor of History.