The Eurasia Research Cluster is a group of scholars from UBC and other universities in BC and Washington whose work focuses on the historical, cultural and political geographies of Eurasia. Eurasia is a landmass encompassing Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, and Mongolia. Its goal is to build connections between researchers who work on the region across disciplines to foster richer dialogue around Eurasian topics at UBC and beyond.
The cluster has its roots in the late 2000s, when several UBC researchers created an informal multidisciplinary reading group on Eurasia. Members read each other’s work on the region and, through this interaction, developed a sense of community. Building on the reading group’s success, in 2012 Alexia Bloch (Anthropology) and Lisa Sundstrom (Political Science) founded a Green College Lecture Series. The “Eurasian States and Societies: Past and Present” series increased discourse around Eurasian topics at UBC. When funding was discontinued in 2016, the group ceased to meet but created a listserv to circulate information about events related to Eurasia in the metro Vancouver area; this listserv connects around 80 students, faculty, and members of the public. In 2019, Led by Katherine Bowers (CENES), the Eurasia Research Cluster received funding from UBC’s Public Humanities Hub. This funding supported renewed connections, the hiring of graduate research assistants, and a series of events, among them a speaker series and a workshop on public writing.
Since 2022, the Eurasia Research Cluster has found a home in UBC’s Centre for European Studies. The Centre’s first thematic speaker series, “Eurasian Environments,” was jointly hosted with the Eurasia Research Cluster.
For more information about the Cluster contact katherine.bowers@ubc.ca