Nazerke Mukhlissova

Nazerke (Naz for short) Mukhlis is a History PhD student at Yale University, where she focuses on the political history of the Soviet Union, late Russian Empire, and Central Asian states. Particularly, she is interested in legal belonging, intellectual history, and citizenship laws. Nazerke was born and raised in Kazakhstan, where she received a Bachelor’s degree at Nazarbayev University with a double major in History and Political Science. Her latest published piece “The ‘Great Steppe’ Narrative: origins, politics, and Aspirations of Eternal Kazakhstan,” explored how Kazakhstan, as a newly independent country, created a state ideology instrumentalizing the Eurasian Steppe with an attempt to distance and differentiate itself from the Soviet past. She has a Master’s Degree in European and Eurasian studies from Yale, during which she wrote a thesis exploring the construction of the Early Soviet Republics in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.