Yana Pak IHSS January 16, 2025

Yana Pak

  • PhD in Sociology, School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, Paris

  • Post-doctoral Fellow, Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Yana Pak

Overview

Yana Pak trained in Sociology at the University of Sorbonne Paris IV in France, she completed her PhD at EHESS (School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, Paris). Her PhD thesis, titled “A Spirit of Post-Soviet Muslim Capitalism? Sociology of an Economic and Religious Entrepreneurial Network in Southern Kazakhstan since 1991” aims to analyze the emergence and confessionalization of new forms of solidarity groups nourished by Islamic values. Her research focuses on the Islamic economy in post-Soviet Central Asia, exploring its implications at both national and international levels. Since 2019, she has been affiliated as an associate researcher at the Fondation France-Japon (EHESS) and later at the Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan, and Central Asian Studies (CETOBAC, EHESS). Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the HKIHSS, University of Hong Kong. Her ongoing research delves into China and Central Asia’s religious and commercial connections and how Chinese Modernity entangles with local socio-political conditions, networks, values, and beliefs. This research project is funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and directed by Prof. David A. Palmer: the RGC Fellowship “Chinese Modernity and Soft Power on the Belt and Road” and the Collaborative Research Fund Grant “Infrastructures of Faith: Religious Mobilities on the Belt and Road”.

Publications

2023. Sufism and Islamic Market in Central Asia: from kolkhoz to halal economy in Kazakhstan. In Turaeva R. & Brose M. (eds.) Religious economies in secular context: Halal markets, practices, and landscapes. London: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 171-191.

2022 (peer-reviewed). Set’ Sufiiskikh predprinimatelei v Kazakhstane: na primere djamaata suleimandjilar [Network of Sufi Entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan: case study of Süleymançı jama’at]. In Abashin S. & Pankov I. (eds.) Sufism after URSS, Moscow: Mardjani Publishing House, p. 260-281.

2020 (peer-reviewed). Making Halal Business in Kazakhstan: Combining the Soviet and Sufi Legacies? Sociology of Islam. Special Issue: Halal Markets in non-Muslim Secular Societies: Halal as Brand, Halal as Practice, 8(3-4): 307-321. Leiden, Brill.

2020. Sociabilité soufie et solidarité économique en Asie centrale : antithèse ou substrat des évolutions actuelles ? Kyoto University Islamic Economic Studies Project, ASAFAS Kyoto University (special issue edited by Sh. Nagaoka) 5: 59-82.

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