It has been a great pleasure to do my doctorate here at Kent, particularly as a GCRF-funded student at the Global Challenges Doctoral Centre (GCDC). Being part of the GCRF COMPASS project has given me the opportunity to attend workshops, seminars and conferences where I can learn from other scholars and present my own work. During this process I have developed my network, met interesting people, and received helpful feedback for my own project. Kent and the GCDC offer a very supportive environment with wonderful colleagues. Furthermore, I have applied for the GCDC Early Career Research Training School in July. I hope to be part of this event and look forward to this opportunity to meet scholars and fellow students.
My research project is looking at Eurasian re-integration with a focus on the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). During the first year I have finished my first chapter and hopefully this could open up new discussions and debates. Situated within the literature on the changing international order, I proposed a thesis regarding the EEU as an order-making regional actor. This offers an interesting conceptual framework to look at Eurasian (re-)integration in the post-Soviet space. The follow-up chapters will cover the historiography of post-Soviet integration, the theory of actorness, and the empirical studies of the EEU. More broadly, this research contributes to the IR debates over the concept of (international) order and the structure-agency issue.
As part of my PhD project, I also look forward to doing fieldwork in the region. The post-Soviet space has been a great interest to me as a social scientist. Doing fieldwork not only involves collecting data, but also means meeting new people and gaining a deeper understanding of what is happening in this region. Again, I am grateful that the GCRF project and the GCDC could offer me the funding to do this!