Morgan Y. Liu is a cultural anthropologist studying the globalization of financial and economic elites in Central Eurasia; Islamic ideas of social justice in former socialist states; the agency and emergent complexity of informal social networks, corporations, states, and non-state actors. His broadest interests concern how Central Eurasians make sense of and act on their society’s structural problems. This includes turning an ethnographic lens onto the dependencies between elites in Central Asia, Turkey, Russia, and China.
morgan
He is Chair of Near Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures, and Associate Professor in Anthropology, The Ohio State University. He is also Affiliated Faculty (advising M.A. and Ph.D. students) at:
- Department of Comparative Studies
- Department of French and Italian
- Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
- Center for East Asian Studies
Before coming to Ohio State, he was a postdoc at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. His Ph.D. is from the University of Michigan in Anthropology.
Contact: liu.737@osu.edu
Key roles
- Presidency, Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS), 2019-2022
- CESS is an international scholarly organization promoting the study of the region roughly between Turkey and Mongolia, including Central Asia, the Caucasus, western China, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, and their interconnections.
- Interim Chair, the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures (NELC) at Ohio State (2013 & 2017-2018)
- Davis Center Book Prize Judge, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) (2017-2019)
- National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH), Grant Committee (2019)
- Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, Screening Committee Member (2015-2017)
Platforms
- Morgan as Religion & World Affairs Blogger for the Huffington Post, through 2017
- Twitter Postings (occasional)
- On Amazon Author Central
The Book
His 2012 book, Under Solomon’s Throne: Uzbek Visions of Renewal in Osh, concerns how ethnic Uzbeks in the city of Osh, Kyrgyzstan think about political authority and post-Soviet transformations, based on research using vernacular language interviews and ethnographic fieldwork of urban social life from 1993 to 2011. This book won the Central Eurasian Studies Society’s 2014 award for Best Book on Central Eurasia in the Social Sciences published in 2012 or 2013.
Dear Prof Liu,
I am Siumi Maria Tam, one of the editors of the journal Asian Anthropology based in the Anthropology Department, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. We have received a book “Variations on Uzbek Identity: Strategic choices, cognitive schemas and political constraints in identification processes”, by Peter Finke (2014 New York, Oxford: Berghahn) and wondered if you would be interested in writing a book review for us.
Book reviews are typically 800-1200 words. We would love to receive the book review by April 2015, aiming to publishing it in the August 2015 issue.
I hope you will accept our invitation, and let me know if the time line above is agreeable to you.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Maria Tam
Dear Maria,
I am honored to get this request. By coincidence, though, I was already asked to review this very book by the Journal for Anthropological Research, and I have already sent in my completed review of this book to them! My apologies. Best wishes in finding another reviewer.
Morgan
Hello Mr Morgan. You are concerned about Sulaimanov Ertabyldy Zholdoshevich from the Republic of Kyrgyzstan. You can contact me. I will be waiting for you. You can contact me via this email. Sincerely, Sulaymanov