Affiliation
Assistant Professor, University of Central Asia, Khorog
Biography
Sultonbek Aksakolov works as a History Faculty, at the School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Central Asia (UCA), which is present in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. He teaches courses on the history of Central Asia, especially on the interrelations between cities and the steppe and on the formation of modern nations. He served, too, as Chair of the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities at UCA. His research focuses on the history of Ismaili Shia Islam in Soviet Badakhshan and, overall, in the history of sacred sites of Tajikistan and Central Asia. He has published articles on the history of the Ismailis, on Islamic education in Central Asia, and on diverse development initiatives in the region. In the past, he has worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Ismaili Studies of London and as an analyst at Silk Road Studies, Uppsala University.
Sultonbek had received his M.Phil. in Modern Societies and Global Transformations from the University of Cambridge in 2002 and completed his Ph.D. in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, the University of London), in 2014. He has a BA degree in Tajik Philology and a degree in the Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities of the Institute of Ismaili Studies. He has been working as a consultant, researcher, editor and translator for several international organisations, as an examiner for International Baccalaureate and, also, as an Assessor for the UK Government’s Chevening global scholarship programme.
Publications related to the project’s theme
Aksakolov, Sultonbek, Historical, Cultural and Natural Sites in Tajikistan, Dushanbe: The University of Central Asia, Cultural Heritage and Humanities Unit, in print (in English, Russian and Tajik Persian)
Aksakolov, Sultonbek, Suzy Blondin, ‘Slowness, Sense of Community and Changing Perceptions of Mobility in Tajikistan’s Bartang Valley’, in Phillip Vanini, ed., Mobilities in High Place, London & New York, Routledge, in print
Aksakolov, Sultonbek, ‘Islamic Education in Tajikistan: A Field of Contestations’, in Dilshad Ashraf, Mir Afzal Tajik, eds., Educational Policies in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan: Contested Terrain in the Twenty-First Century, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017: 53–80
Aksakolov, Sultonbek, ‘The Nizari Ismailis of Central Asia’, in Farhad Daftary, ed., A Modern History of the Ismailis: Continuity and Change in a Muslim Community, London, I. B. Tauris, 2011, pp. 45–75
Personal URL:
https://ucentralasia.academia.edu/SultonbekAksakolov
