In the run up to International Women’s Day (8th March), we caught up with Jasmin Dall’Agnola (@jazzdallagnola), Associate Editor of Central Asian Survey and post-doctoral researcher at The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich to talk about her research on gender issues in Central Asia. We also talked to her about her recent open-access book Researching Central Asia and learned how Jasmin is advocating for increasing diversity in academia and amplifying the voices of researchers.
- Can you tell us a little about your background? Where did you grow up?
People, when they first meet me, tend to think of me as a city girl. However, I spent most of my childhood growing up in a small village in the northern German speaking part of Switzerland. I am not only a country girl, I was also the first person in my family to go to university and to get a PhD. To make ends meet during my studies, I always had to work in part-time jobs, and I think this has very much influenced my research, especially my ability to understand and relate to people from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
2. Is there anything from your formative years that might have sparked off your interest in Central Asia?
My father started to sell ventilators to Kazakhstan for a Swiss medical company in the early 2000s. On several occasions my father invited his business friends to our home in Switzerland to introduce them to his family and share a meal. As a result, not only had some of my father’s business partners witnessed my journey from adolescent to adulthood, Murat, a bilingual Kazakh from Kostanay, had even introduced me to the Russian and Kazakh languages during one of those intimate dinner gatherings at our home in 2007. So, although I was not born in the region, these gatherings inspired my interest in and nurtured my wish to learn more about Kazakhstan and the Central Asian region more broadly.
3. So, did these gatherings also inspire your PhD thesis?
Yes, my father’s close ties to Kazakhstan definitely did influence my PhD research.
The original idea for my PhD project was to investigate the impact of globalisation on national identities in the countries formerly occupied by Soviet Russia. To explore this question, I used a mixed-methods approach that confronted wider statistical trends for the whole region with interview data gathered in one country. Since my study looked at non-elite voices, I needed to conduct my fieldwork in a country where I could meet people from these communities.
In this context, my father’s close connection to Kazakhstan helped me a great deal to introduce me to people from working-class communities who under less informal circumstances would not have agreed to talk to me. This allowed me to speak to many different voices and opinions in a short period of time. My father’s acquaintances also helped me to extend my PhD fieldwork to Almaty, Shymkent, and Aktau, since I had only originally planned to visit Kostanay and Astana.
4. After writing a PhD thesis on globalisation and nationalism, how did you end up researching gender issues and information communication technologies in Central Asia?
In my original doctoral project, I had initially not included Communication Studies or Gender Studies. However, when I was analysing the interview data I had gathered for my PhD project, I learned that globalisation in the context of Kazakhstan mainly seemed to operate through information communication technologies (ICTs) such as the internet and social media. Moreover, ICTs were not only seen by my interviewees to impact their perception of their national identity but also gender dynamics in the region. All this led me to look at how ICTs influences gender roles, gender-based violence, and queer and feminist activism in Central Asia.
5. In the run up to International Women’s Day, could you tell us a little bit more about your work on women’s digital awareness raising campaigns in Central Asia?
I have published numerous studies and a recent special issue in Central Asian Survey (LGBTQ+ Visibilities in the Caucasus and Central Asia) on the question of what impact the popularisation of the Internet has on women and queer activism in Central Asia. Moreover, in my forthcoming book with Routledge, Internet and Gender in Kazakhstan, I find that there are three ways in which ICTs empower Central Asian women in their society and family.
First, ICTs are frequently used by women and queer activists to raise awareness about gender issues, especially gender-based violence in Central Asia. For example, social media activists, such as the Instagram activist group Tell Me Sister in Tajikistan, publish anonymised stories of sexual violence and harassment on their social media accounts in order to raise public awareness and change public acceptance of gender-based violence against women in their communities.
Second, ICTs can be used by Central Asian women to create virtual safe spaces where they can mingle with the opposite sex and access information and services about taboo topics such as abortion, premarital sex, and domestic violence in a way that is safe, culturally appropriate, and accessible to them.
Third, ICTs can also act as an important safety tool for Central Asian women in preventing or fleeing from violent situations. In the event of a nonconsensual abduction, for example, a smartphone can be even more helpful to disarm a potential abuser than pepper spray.
7. Could you talk a little about the pleasures and challenges of researching Central Asia, and give us some highlights from your book Researching Central Asia?
My own PhD fieldwork experience in Central Asia inspired me to start an honest conversation with various scholars about how their positionality informs their experiences of conducting research in the region. Our positionality influences not only the topics we research, the questions we ask and the methods we chose, but it also influences our access to the field and the way in which we are received by the communities that we are studying. For that purpose, I decided to organise the book, Researching Central Asia with Dr Aijan Sharshenova.
In this book, both non-local and local scholars as well as practitioners reflect about their experiences of conducting research in and on Central Asia. The book also highlights some of the common issues faced by researchers who find themselves in similar research settings or dealing with autocratic state authorities. In my own contribution to the volume, I talk about my experiences with sexual harassment and cyberstalking in the field, and how I learnt to navigate it.
8. What four practical pieces of advice would you give to other fieldwork researchers, especially women?
My advice would be to:
- Prior to your fieldwork, make sure you are fluent in at least one of the languages spoken in your country of research.
- Before going into the field, read about other scholars’ experiences of doing field research in the country.
- During your fieldtrip, make sure you conduct your interviews/research in a crowded public space. Try to restrict your fieldwork and travel to daylight hours.
- Set-up a safety protocol with your gatekeepers, family or friends in the field and back home. For example, I always found it useful to share my travel plans and geolocation with one of my informants/close friends in the field and my partner back home in Switzerland.
9. There is a lot of talk on decolonising Central Asian Studies. Do you have any thoughts on how we as non-local researchers can support efforts to decolonise the field?
To decolonise, entails that we, as non-local scholars, must actively engage with and acknowledge the knowledge produced by local scholars based in the region. This also means that we have to make academia more accessible, for example through the organisation of academic conferences in Central Asia.
Thankfully, both CESS (Central Eurasian Studies Assocation) and ESCAS (European Society for Central Asian Studies) have recognised this problem and have started to organise their annual conferences in the region. For the same reason, we should stop studying the Central Asian region through a Russian lens.
We have to also consider all Central Asian voices, even those that promote ideas and values that we may disagree with. As a first-generation academic myself, I often feel repelled by both local and non-local scholars who use interviews with elite circles to draw generalisations about the wider Central Asian public. I am personally convinced that only by engaging in an active dialogue with various voices, including the marginalised working-class communities, can we revitalise and diversify Central Asian Studies.
10. Do you feel that there are any challenges you have faced in academia that your male counterparts have not?
The challenges women face in any kind of profession differ from their male counterparts. For example, a lot of job opportunities still stem from “boys talking to boys” conversations which can be often difficult to access by women. It is in this context, where my networking experiences with established female scholars have proven to be very valuable. In inviting me to all-boys private dinner gatherings, to co-author a paper with them or to deliver a talk at their institutions, they have helped me to counter the “opportunity gap”.
While women networks can help some female scholars to break the glass ceiling, another challenge that women face in the workplace is often the lack of solidarity among female co-workers. Despite all the amazing advice and support that I have received from my female academic peers over time, I had to learn that our work relationships can also constitute another source of discrimination. The competition to remain and climb the ladder in academia can not only encourage negative self-comparisons, but also fractious relationships between working colleagues and collaborators that impose limits on opportunities for peer support among women.
11. What advice would you give to young academics in general?
Be careful in choosing your collaborations with others. Because of the nature of academia, we often engage in collaborations with people we barely know, only to find out later that we are being exploited by our co-investigators. I had to learn this the hard way myself.
Try to come up with a work-and-life balance that works for you. To prove their love and commitment to academia, many of us are willing to sacrifice our mental and physical well-being. As such, it comes as no surprise that early-career scholars have been found to report high rates of depression, anxiety and other mental health issues.
Make sure to surround yourself with people that support and love you the way you are in your private life. My loved ones are the first to hear about my success but also the first I go to when I need to vent about my failures. They allow me to stay balanced because they encourage me to take breaks from my work and take care of both my mental and physical well-being.
Finally, always have a Plan B if your Plan A in academia does not work out. In this context, it is crucial that you stay connected to the real world, the world outside of academia. Friends working in the private sector can be helpful as they can reassure you that there are plenty of other career opportunities for you outside of academia.
To learn more about how to improve your mental wellbeing see my recent Research Note in Central Asian Survey (‘Let’s talk about researchers’ mental well-being‘).
12. It is International Women’s Day this week and the theme is ‘Invest in women: Accelerate progress”. Has another woman (alive or historical) inspired you? Can you explain why or in what ways?
A woman who has inspired me and my research on gender issues in Central Asia is my mother. Despite her job in the gendered beauty industry, my mother allowed me to follow non-gendered ideas with regard to my appearance or lifestyle choices. She never conveyed information about how I as a girl should behave, speak or dress. This resulted in my choosing to dress up as Basil the male detective in the film The Great Mouse Detective (1986) for my first Swiss carnival, despite my namesake Princess Jasmin in the Disney film Aladdin (1992).
Inspired by my mother’s ‘gender-responsive parenting’, I decided to dedicate my research to the empowerment of women, queer people, and those who do not conform to heteronormative gender roles in their societies.
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This interview is part of ‘Meet the Editors’ series where we interview members of the TWQ and Central Asian Survey editorial teams about the career, work, achievements as well as covering hot topics in the field.
