Khasan Redjaboev

Welcome! I am a PhD Candidate in Political Science in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I have been a Predoctoral Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University since 2023. 

I am a comparative political scientist. My research focuses on comparative politics, the political economy of development, public administration and governance, social policy, and redistribution, with an empirical focus on post-communist Eurasia. My most recent CV is here. 

My book-length dissertation project, titled Communist Colonialism and Development: Building the State Patriarchy in Eurasia, 1870-2020, contributes novel theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence to help explain (1) how some of the signature authoritarian social outcomes that outlived regime collapses were established through forced labor extraction that heavily relied on women's participation and (2) why authoritarian progress in social policy is short lived. My primary research interests in forced labor were informed by my immediate family members’ work in cotton fields (along with the millions of other victims).

Service with publicly scalable impact has been my passion since my first job. I am a pro bono Member of the Public Advisory Council at the Ministry of Labor and Poverty Reduction's Agency for Mahallabay [Micro-District Level] Working and Entrepreneurship Development - Uzbekistan's governmental agency established to reduce poverty and improve local economic outcomes. Before that, I was a non-resident Research Associate (unpaid, independent) at the Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Republic of Uzbekistan (2021-2023, mostly on international ratings and evidence-based policymaking). 

I am passionate about education and extending its benefits to the communities I serve and the vulnerable communities from where I come. In 2023-2024, I helped the New Uzbekistan University's Academic Board in building the country’s first Western-style, research intensive (R1) university. I took active part in establishing the School of Humanities, Natural, and Social Sciences, hiring a top scholar to lead it as the Founding Dean, founding the country's first Summer School in Economics and Mathematics that brought top scholars to facilitate graduate program access, and starting Uzbekistan's first ever post-doctoral fellowship. Finally, I helped design and successfully complete Uzbekistan's first independent research fundraising campaign, hopefully laying the foundation for the university's aspirations towards more autonomy through its own endowment and tenure systems. 

In addition to my academic conferences, events, and review work, I aim to bring world class research with local partnerships to Central Asia. I co-founded and am a co-principal investigator at two long-term and externally funded collaborative research projects: Local Economic and Administrative Performance (LEAP) in Central Asia and Interdisciplinary Central Asia Politics, History and Economics (ICAPHE) Research Group. Both projects proudly employ and train junior Central Asian scholars. Beginning 2024, I am a graduate student member of the Governance at the Central Eurasian Studies Society, a leading scholarly community for interdisciplinary social scientists and humanities' scholars studying the region, contributing to two committees. Finally, I am a member of the Harvard Central Asian Archives Task Force, working to make unique and under-used but also barrier-ridden archives across Central Asia more accessible to interdisciplinary scholarly communities.

I published policy commentary at East Asia Forum and Bourse and Bazaar Foundation (Central Asia and Middle East-focused think tank), hosted expert talks, and spoke and actively participated at several high-level policy events on the benefits of greater public accountability, democratic participation, and evidence-based decision-making, most recently at the Uzbekistan Economic Forum and International Ratings Forum in Tashkent, both in 2022.