Dr Luca Anceschi
- Senior Lecturer in Central Asian Studies (Central & East European Studies)
telephone: 01413306559
email: Luca.Anceschi@glasgow.ac.uk
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https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5382-540XBiography
I have been teaching Central Asian Studies in CEES since September 2013.
Before coming to Glasgow, I lectured in International Relations at La Trobe University in Melbourne, where, in 2012-2013, I held a Discovery Early Career Fellowship awarded by the Australian Research Council.
There are three major lines of inquiry in my research agenda, which, throughout my career, has remained generally focused on the Politics and International Relations of post-Soviet Central Asia.
One of my key interests relates to the investigation of the region’s processes of foreign policymaking, which remained idiosyncratic throughout the post-Soviet era and are often characterised by mainstream media and academic observers as opaque. Here, my work contributed to unveil the domestic power implications of policy frameworks designed to operate at international level. I authored two monographs looking at how foreign policy is made across Central Asia.
- My first book, Turkmenistan’s Foreign Policy – Positive Neutrality and the Consolidation of the Turkmen regime (Routledge 2008), represented the first book-length account of Turkmen foreign policy published in Western languages.
- I recently completed a long-term project that contextualised the roles that ideas and constructs associated with Eurasia have played in the making of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy during the Nazarbaev era. The project's resulting monograph, titled Analysing Kazakhstan's Foreign Policy - Regime neo-Eurasianism in the Nazarbaev era, has also been published by Routledge.
I have a longstanding interest in locating discursively Central Asia’s energy mega projects in multidisciplinary debates focusing on the role that energy infrastructure play domestically and internationally. As part of my contribution to these debates, I completed a multi-level study of the virtual politics intrinsic to the TAPI megaproject, a long-distance natural gas pipeline intended to operate across the Central/South Asia divide. This study appeared in article form on the Central Asian Survey. I am involved in a project designed to offer a further contribution to the study of Central Asia’s energy infrastructure. This project, currently in its very early stages of development, is focused on the role assigned to the Kashagan oil megafield in the narratives of development framed in Kazakhstan during the late Nazarbaev era.
A third, more recent line of research is meant to result in a multi-stage investigation of Central Asia’s personalistic rulership. My initial contribution to Political Science debates on personalism centred on the processes that regulated power transfers out of personalist regimes in post-Niyazov Turkmenistan and post-Karimov Uzbekistan. A research article exploring these themes is forthcoming on the Journal of Contemporary Asia in 2020.
I contribute regularly to the international debate on Central Asian Affairs. I am a regular writer for Open Democracy Russia, and I am frequently interviewed in the Central Asia-focused podcasts organised by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Recently, I have been quoted in The Economist, the Financial Times, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and The New Republic.
Together with my CEES colleague Prof David Smith, I edit the journal Europe-Asia Studies.
I am the coordinator of the consortium delivering the Erasmus Mundus International Master in Central & East European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, which will receive, between 2018 and 2022, a €3.1 million grant awarded by the European Commission.
Research interests
- The making of foreign policy post-Soviet Central Asia
- The geopolitics of Eurasian energy in the era of climate change
- Personalism and personalistic rulership in post-Soviet Central Asia
Publications
Selected publications
Anceschi, L. (2008) Turkmenistan’s Foreign Policy: Positive Neutrality and the Consolidation of the Turkmen Regime. Series: Central Asian studies series. Routledge: London ; New York. ISBN 9780415454407
Anceschi, L. (2014) Dilemmas of compatibility: GCC-Kazakhstani relations. Journal of Arabian Studies, 4(1), pp. 1-19. (doi: 10.1080/21534764.2014.918466)
Anceschi, L. (2014) The tyranny of pragmatism: EU–Kazakhstani relations. Europe-Asia Studies, 66(1), pp. 1-24. (doi: 10.1080/09668136.2013.864101)
Anceschi, L. (2010) Integrating domestic politics and foreign policy making: the cases of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Central Asian Survey, 29(2), pp. 143-158. (doi: 10.1080/02634937.2010.498231)
All publications
Supervision
I am happy to consider proposals from students interested in pursuing postgraduate research related to any of the following areas:
- Politics and International Relations of post-Soviet Central Asia
- Eurasian security (both traditional and non-traditional)
- Eurasian integration, especially the Eurasian Economic Union
- The geopolitics of Eurasian energy
- Comparative authoritarianism
Currently supervised students:
Julia Schwab (ESRC): Energy megaprojects in post-Soviet Kazakhstan and Russia
Paolo Sorbello (Europe-Asia Studies scholarship): Industrial Relations in Kazakhstan's Oil Regions
Teaching
Undergraduate
- Contributor, Central and East European Studies Level 2
- Honours Option: The International Politics of post-Soviet Central Asia
- Honours Option: The Political Economy of post-Soviet Eurasia (not available in 2019/2020)
Postgraduate
- Contributor, Issues in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
- MSc Option: Rethinking Central Asian Security (not available in 2019/2020)
Central & East European Studies, 9 Lilybank gardens,
