Acknowledgments

We want to begin by acknowledging the eleven authors and their contributions to the Central Asia Research Cluster project and thank them for trusting us with their manuscripts. It is their deep collaborative spirit and wide-ranging scholarly interests that inspired our collective work. Coming from different disciplines and academic training, these well-established scholars have provided a blueprint for transnational collaboration. Peripheral Narratives and Knowledge Production in Soviet and Contemporary Central Asia, 1917-Present is a reflection of their insightful scholarship and areas of specialization.

There are many individuals, departments, programs, and institutions that were crucial to this project. Our immense gratitude first and foremost goes out to our distinguished editorial board members. Especially, Dr. Samuel Hodgkin (Yale University), Dr. Rebekah Ramsay (University of California, Berkeley), Dr. Nora Webb Williams (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Dr. Artemy Kalinovsky (Temple University), Dr. Cynthia Buckley (University of Michigan), Dr. Jesko Schmoller (Humboldt University Berlin), Dr. Zayra Badillo Castro (Center for Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean), Dr. Botakoz Kassymbekova (University of Zurich), Kit Condill (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Celia Emmelhainz (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian), Olga Makarova (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Jon Giullian (University of Kansas).

This project would not have been possible without generous support from the following centers, departments, institutions, and academic programs: Illinois International (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center (Indiana University), Humanities Research Institute (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), School of Information Sciences (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and the Illinois Open Publishing Network.

We are also immensely grateful to our outstanding team of copyeditors: Danielle Nutting, Michael Hurley, Devin Edmonds, and Serenity Stanton Orengo. Further thanks are due to Kimberly Johnson (University of Illinois Library) for keeping us on track and processing financial transactions on our behalf.

Finally, we would like to thank Angela Watters, Mary Ton, Daniel Tracy, Cadence Cordell, and the staff in the Scholarly Communication and Publishing unit at the University of Illinois Library.