In his project, titled Building a Better Tomorrow: Development Knowledge and Practice in Central Asia and Beyond, 1970-2017, Artemy Kalinovsky will examine how international development transformed post-Soviet Central Asia, and, conversely, how encountering post-socialist states transformed the paradigms and practices of international development.

The landscape of Central Asia - Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan - is littered with physical remnants of the Soviet era: positive ones such as health centres and schools, and negative ones such as dilapidated factories and polluted land. In addition, there are the political, intellectual and institutional Soviet inheritances. Kalinovsky's project focuses on economists, activists, specialists and government officials in Central Asia who joined national and international development organisations after the Soviet period. By studying these individuals and the legacies of their work, Kalinovsky intends to investigate how ideas and practices of economic development and welfare provision have been shaped and reformed at the local and international level.

Artemy Kalinovsky is affiliated with the Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies (ARTES). His most recent book, Laboratory of Socialist Development, placed the development of Central Asia in the post-Soviet era in a global context. The book won the Davis Center Prize and the Ed A Hewitt Prize.

Kalinovsky teaches Bachelor's and Master's courses on Russian, Central Asian, and Cold War history. The University of Amsterdam offers an English-taught BA programme in European Studies, as well as an MA programme specialising in Eastern European Studies.

Consolidator Grants are intended for researchers who obtained their PhDs 7 to 12 years ago. The grants enable the researchers to consolidate their position as independent researchers.