Professor Luca Anceschi
- Professor of Eurasian Studies (Central & East European Studies)
telephone:
01413306559
email:
Luca.Anceschi@glasgow.ac.uk
pronouns:
They/them/theirs
Central & East European Studies, 9 Lilybank gardens
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5382-540XBiography
I have been teaching Central Asian Studies in CEES since September 2013, and took up a Professorship in Eurasian Studies in August 2021.
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 remained focused throughout my career 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. 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.
- My second book represented the culmination of 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. 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 on the domestic and international roles played by energy infrastructure. As part of my contribution to these debates, I completed a multi-level study of the virtual politics of 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 further project studying Central Asia’s energy infrastructure. Currently in its very early stages of development, this project focuses 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 personalism and personalist rule, both within and beyond Central Asia. 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 has appeared on the Journal of Contemporary Asia. More recently, I have completed, together with colleagues based in Dublin and Quebec City, a major edited collection to be published in 2024 by Oxford University Press, Personalism & Personalist Regimes, which looks comparatively at contemporary forms of personalism and personalist rule across the world.
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. I have been quoted in The Economist, the Financial Times, The Guardian, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Since 2015, I have been the editor of Europe-Asia Studies.
Research interests
- The making of foreign policy in post-Soviet Central Asia
- The geopolitics of Eurasian energy in the era of climate change
- Personalism and personal rule in post-Soviet Central Asia
Publications
Selected publications
Anceschi, L. (2020) Analysing Kazakhstan's Foreign Policy: Regime Neo-Eurasianism in the Nazarbaev Era. Series: Central Asia research forum. Routledge. ISBN 9780415711432 (doi: 10.4324/9781315674698)
Anceschi, L. (2017) Turkmenistan and the virtual politics of Eurasian energy: the case of the TAPI pipeline project. Central Asian Survey, 36(4), pp. 409-429. (doi: 10.1080/02634937.2017.1391747)
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. (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
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:
- Gabdullin, Gabit
Eurasian Economic Union: Political and socio-economic implications - Khalafov, Teymur
Natural Resource Funds (NRFs) in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan - unexpected efficiency
Doctoral supervision: Past students
Paolo Sorbello, Industrial Relations in Kazakhstan's Oil Sector [1991-2019].
Teaching
Undergraduate
- Contributor, Central and East European Studies Level 2
- Honours Option: CEES 4082, The International Politics of post-Soviet Central Asia
- Honours Option: CEES 4083, The Political Economy of post-Soviet Eurasia
Postgraduate
- Contributor, CEES 5065, Issues in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
- MSc Option: CEES 5062, Rethinking Central Asian Security
