Seminars

Introductory Seminar (11 Feb 2022)

On February 11^th, 2022, the NUG participants, headed by Doctors Lili Di Puppo, Arnab Roy Chowdhury, and Christian Froehlich, held their first in-person project meeting. Most of the NUG members were able to attend despite pandemic conditions, hence, during the meeting individual tasks were discussed alongside with measures to strengthen group communication. The NUG’s student members were assigned to be responsible for the group email and WhatsApp chat for a quick communication. Moreover, NUG members agreed to have a common Google Drive which would allow for everyone to trace each other’s progress, as well as access the literature relevant to all case-studies. It was decided that NUG seminars will be held every three weeks, whereby students and professors will share their research ideas and preliminary findings.

First, Dr. Froehlich explained the administrative aspects of the project, like funding and reporting. Then Dr. Di Puppo shared her vision of the project’s research work and discussed the individual job descriptions. The first task for all students would be to map environmental groups and civil society movements to be presented in the next seminar. Following the discussion, Dr. Roy Chowdhury shared useful resources, including the Environmental Justice Atlas website, which students could use as not only a starting point for research, but a database that they can contribute to by expanding it with the cases they know personally and will study during the project.

All the senior NUG members encouraged students to stay proactive by searching for conferences, regional or international collaborations, and interesting case-studies. Apart from that, senior NUG members shared their experience by recommending the students to document the processes they engage in. This could be done by filling in fieldwork diaries, tracing mental processes while coming up with research ideas or concepts, and taking pictures or videos during the fieldwork, all of which will be posted on the NUG website.

The meeting ended with arranging the next seminar date. It will be held on March 3^rd , 2022.

Second Seminar (28 Mar 2022)

The second seminar of the 'Environment, Space and Identity in the Eurasian Region' NUG was held on March 28th, 2022, online via Zoom. The issues of mapping of the environmental initiatives, as discussed in the research tasks for each NUG member, as well as the fieldwork matters were addressed in this seminar.

Tomiris Mashan, Anastasia Zagorevskaya, and Andrey Plotniskiy, who work on the post-Soviet space, shared their preliminary findings on various case studies of local environmental initiatives in Kazakhstan and Russia. Students also raised their concerns on the access to the activist communities in the light of political events. Hence, senior NUG members shared their advice on choosing the appropriate research sites for fieldwork this summer. Following that, Reza Habib and Saikot Ghosh reported on their progress and future plans of contacting NGOs and forest communities in Bangladesh. After a series of brief overview of the mapped cases, senior NUG members appointed students who would present their selected cases in more detail in the following seminars.

Starting on April 12^th, the seminars will be dedicated to student presentations of the empirical case studies.

Third Seminar (12 Apr 2022)

In the third seminar, student participants presented their research proposals and received feedback from both senior group members and peers.

Fourth Seminar (7 Jun 2022)

In the fourth seminar, Shrabanti Kundu presented her mapping and preliminary case-study for the “Volunteer engagement for the preservation of natural sites” case with a focus on Bangladesh.

Fifth Seminar (28 Jun 2022)

During the fifth seminar, two members of the Post-Soviet space team presented their case study proposals. 

Anastasia Zagorevskaya put forward her case study of green conservatism with a focus on Russian Orthodox Church’s approach to environmental work. She briefly talked through the history of Russian Orthodox Church’s actions related to environment conservation, suggested relevant research methodology and demonstrated her preliminary interview questions. 

Andrey Plotniskiy in his presentation introduced the case study of Kuzbass and Khakassia, where massive coal production is taking place, which is leading to an ethnocide (local perspective) of the Shor indigenous population in these regions. Previously, Andrey has already done fieldwork in the region of Kuzbass but he had studied the social and cultural dimensions of the protest movements, while now he is planning to focus on the religious dimension with a research question: “What is the role of religion in the religious and anti-coal movement?”. Andrey discussed the area and environmental issues there, two prospective directions for the study, a theoretical framework (the notion of Friction by Anna L. Tsing, when different religious and non-religious practices converge), proposed methods and a timeline for conducting the research. The discussion was followed by Andrey’s findings from his previous research on the region, which revolved around the mechanisms of the protest in Kuzbass and Khakassia and what he expects to find in the new study. Andrey highlighted new forms of protest, which appeared in the last two years after his first fieldwork.

For the next seminar, which is planned for the second half of July, Dr. Lili Di Puppo proposed to hold a session dedicated to interview questions and fieldwork preparation.