Philipp Lottholz is one of two Book Review Editors for Central Asian Survey (CAS). In this Q&A, Philipp chats to Zara Qadir, founder of the Global Souths Hub about his role as a visiting professor at the Center for Conflict Studies, Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany and his current research initiatives. Philip also discusses the controversies/debates that are now rising in the field of Central Asian Studies, as well as his work in bridging the gap between academic study and society.
1. Can you tell us a little about your background?
I grew up in South Germany, which is the homeland of automotive corporations but also a fairly apolitical region. But I did enjoy studying in the city of Tübingen where I was fairly active in student organisations. My family and I had moved to the south from Eastern Germany where most of my relatives still live, so figuring out south German society and habits was an important part of my early life.
I now live in Duisburg in the post-industrial Ruhr region with my partner from Bulgaria (and this is where we spend most vacations). Having moved around a lot when I was young, I’ve always carried with me the importance of helping people in settling down and making a home. Since then I have worked to support migrants from Southeast Europe through different projects. The stark contrasts between living conditions, precarity and (dis-) investment across regions (as well as socio-cultural groups) within Germany, Europe and globally is something that has driven my political and intellectual endeavours.
2. So what inspired your passion in International Politics?
Political Economy has always been my guiding interest in this field. In German academia, economics and politics are still very separate while in the UK, Political Economy is a strong tradition and discipline. I was interested in understanding the processes whereby certain policies and frameworks are portrayed as normal and desirable, whereas the economic benefits accruing to a few dominant actors are not spoken of. For instance, how to explain the continued dominance of neoliberal free market and free trade policies in small, peripheral countries like Kyrgyzstan which had seen little growth, political instability and even violent conflict even 30 years after adopting these policies? I thought that with a Political Economy perspective, there was a possibility to give answers to such questions and make a bigger societal impact.
3. What is your specialised expertise in the Central Asian region?
Kyrgyzstan is where I have spent most time and I did my PhD and master’s thesis there. The country was my focus simply because it is challenging to do field research elsewhere in the region. I also do conduct a lot of comparative work on political discourses and practices across the region. For example, during my postdoc, I compared urban infrastructures and insecurity in the capital of Kyrgyzstan with Plovdiv in Bulgaria, so finding differences and similarities between Central Asia with Eastern Europe.
4. Can you tell me about your role at the Center for Conflict Studies, Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany?
I am currently a visiting professor at the Center for Conflict Studies, which entails teaching a lecture on violent conflict and peace processes in the international system and seminars on “Youth, society and politics”, as well as a research seminar on “International Governance” and an introductory course on “Central Asian Politics and Society”.
My usual position is a postdoctoral researcher in the collaborative research Centre Dynamics of Security at the same university. I work on a sub-project on securitisation in the United Nations Trusteeship Council, a sub-body of the UN General Assembly tasked to oversee the administration of former German and Japanese colonial territories after World War II. Here, I am particularly focussed on historical debates between the Soviet Union, Western powers and Global South countries on how to govern these territories and help them attain independence.
I also co-run the visiting fellow program which every year welcomes applications from those working on aspects pertaining to security/securitisation from a historical perspective.
5. What are you currently working on?
I am finalising an article on the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the bloc of western powers in the United Nations Trusteeship Council. Given the fraught nature of independence and self-determination in today’s global politics, it’s important to do historical research on how currently prevailing concepts and ideas emerged. For example: What kind of arguments did actors exchange back then? What did they focus on when trying to administer sustainable economic and human development as well as social relations in trust territories?
My co-author Werner Distler, University of Groningen, and I are examining the aspects on which the Soviet delegation tried to scrutinise the Western so-called “trustee” powers who administered trust territories, but we have also identified areas in which these power blocs cooperated more or less explicitly. The controversies revolved mostly around discrimination, economic exploitation and de facto colonial relations between the trustee powers and indigenous populations. Yet, there was also a lot of consensus on what constitutes development and a modern state, with indigenous and traditional cultures often being perceived as not being compatible with modernity and democratic politics.
6. What motivates you to do your academic research?
There is obviously the academic ethos in which you want to contribute to a certain research agenda or debate. I believe it is important to contribute to the accumulation of knowledge and the improvement of different theories and concepts.
However, recently I have become more acutely aware of how remote academic research is from society. This is especially obvious on social media: the way that knowledge and theories are dealt with is completely different from academic discussions.
7. So how do you resolve this issue of bringing the two worlds together, academia and society?
I can think of three ways which I have tried to help.
Firstly, I have found ways to address urgent societal problems through research. For example, for one project I looked at the lack of infrastructures and social services in so-called “new settlements” in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek and the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv. This is an approach that my colleague Karolina Kluczewska and I call “cooperative research”. It is the potential for community level and societal movements to reflect on and develop their activities and strategies to address their own problems and conflicts.
Another way is to increase the visibility of research by writing or contributing to blog posts (such as this one) or using other accessible formats. This can provide a platform for dialogue and reflection in society and communities. However, written formats usually fall short because they either don’t reach people or because people only communicate and consume knowledge through videos, reels and live-formats.
I’ve also recently had the pleasure to work with international NGOs and UN agencies like UNFPA, in consultancy projects on preventing violent extremism and building peaceful and resilient communities in Kyrgyzstan. These projects have thankfully been open to critical reflection and dialogue, although there is still a lot of room to integrate such activities more centrally and systematically in such organisations.
8. What changes would you like to see in the field?
One thing that really needs to change is access to and participation in academic debates. I have the impression that you can only really participate in a debate or in academic research when your institutional affiliation gives you the resources. Therefore, lots of people who might want to engage in research based in Central Asia or even in regions within the Global South can’t because they may have a massive teaching load, or they simply don’t have the time or resources.
It would also be beneficial if Central Asian studies could have more centres, or working groups/other structures where experience and knowledge is pooled and leveraged. In most institutions, Central Asia scholars are the odd ones out and we have to use a disciplinary identity to secure employment and publications. It is important that area studies are strengthened and institutionalised regardless of geopolitical importance.
Another aspect is the lack of dialogue and collaboration between established disciplines like IR and political science with area studies perspectives. For example, for leading (inter-) disciplinary journals or other publication platforms, widening their regional scope seems difficult due to a shortage of available reviewers with the necessary background and expertise or a lack of strategic thinking and decision-making on the editorial side. Therefore, publications that go ‘beyond the West’, as it is often said, tend to be focussed on regions and contexts that also are historically and strategically linked to the Western and especially the Anglo-American world. This is not to say that research on ‘canonic cases’ of armed conflict and intervention is not important in its own right, especially good quality research. It is just that it should not only be market logic (like download numbers or impact metrics) that determine which countries and regions get more attention in international politics and IR journals and which ones less.
9. Where do you see the most exciting debates/research happening in your field?
There is lots of interesting research, but debate is still lacking in my view.
One important debate is on ‘Global IR’, and how IR can be made more diverse, more globalised including more voices. As colleagues have argued, there are limitations to such an endeavour because the discipline is deeply embedded in the higher education business model, institutions of state power and the Western geopolitical interests and worldviews they promote. So, there are legitimate doubts that giving space to top institutions and scholars from a number of non-Western countries will diversify IR, especially on the intellectual plane. This points to the importance of reflecting on the suitability of IR as a dialogue platform compared to other disciplines and frameworks.
Another key issue is that everyone has to adjust the way they write to the model of English-speaking journals. I think a real debate still needs to happen for us to really figure out ways forward where English is not the primary (if not only) language of academic research. This problem affects Central Asian studies greatly, but I don’t see an explicit debate or effective proposals on how to deal with the problem. I am hopeful that new initiatives like the regional language book review section in Central Asian Survey, and the new Ketmen International Journal for Central Asian Voices can help to further broaden the horizon of publishing and the wider agenda in the field.
Within Central Asian studies, I am very excited to see a rising awareness and reflection on issues of fieldwork and broader research into safety and ethics aspects (for example, Researching Central Asia). However, other important debates seem to remain largely untapped. For instance, whether and how to research so-called “illiberal” and “authoritarian” regimes is still productive, or if an alternative approach of post-liberalism offers a more useful perspective. There have been some advancements made in our journal, CAS and also in the Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism (2023) edited by Marlene Laruelle.
Another topic that seems to be widely discussed is the colonial nature of the Soviet regime and its present-day implications for political and societal change. There has been a huge outburst of interest now in light of the Ukraine War on the Soviet Union as a colonial empire. However, discussion appears to be structured into various groups and platforms that are more decentral, divided along linguistic lines and certain political world views and beliefs. To some extent, the different camps don’t really talk to each other. These are questions where I believe academic debate can make a difference and help put things into perspective.
10. My last question is if you could spend a day with another professional in your area or someone you respect, who would it be and why?
This is a hard question because there would be a number of people. Franco Galdini obviously comes to mind. We met in Kyrgyzstan, and I have always enjoyed spending time with him. He also embodies what I think is needed in Central Asian studies, that is, many years of experience and knowledge of the region combined with a very solid grounding in a disciplinary approach, in his case political economy. Franco also has extensive experience working with a number of publication outlets.
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