The Institute for Advanced International Studies will host a guest lecture under its Frontier Talks series by Dr Artemy Kalinovsky on the topic “Silk Roads and Eurobonds: Geopolitics and the Financing of the Roghun Dam”. The lecture will examine the Roghun Dam not only as a major hydropower project, but also as a case through which broader questions of infrastructure financing, regional connectivity, energy politics and geopolitical competition in Central Asia can be analysed.

Dr Artemy Kalinovsky is a Professor at Temple University’s College of Liberal Arts, where he is affiliated with the Departments of History and Political Science. His areas of expertise include the Soviet Union, Russia, development, foreign policy, Central Asia, international interventions and the Cold War. He received his BA from George Washington University and his MA and PhD from the London School of Economics, and previously spent a decade teaching at the University of Amsterdam.

Dr Kalinovsky is the author of A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan and Laboratory of Socialist Development: Cold War Politics and Decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan, the latter of which received the Davis and Hewett prizes from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. His current research focuses on the legacies of socialist development in contemporary Central Asia and the intersection between socialist and capitalist approaches to development.

The upcoming lecture will offer an opportunity to discuss how large-scale infrastructure projects shape state strategies, external financing models and regional relations. By bringing together historical perspective and contemporary geopolitical analysis, the session will contribute to a deeper understanding of Central Asia’s evolving role in global development, energy and connectivity debates.

Date: May 15

Time: 11 AM

Venue: IAIS Conference Hall