Sebastien Peyrouse

Sébastien Peyrouse, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Fellow at the Central Asia and Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Program Joint Center (SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC - the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm). He was a doctoral and postdoctoral Fellow at the French Institute for Central Asian Studies in Tashkent (1998-2000 and 2002-2005), a Research Fellow at the Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University in Sapporo (2006), and a Research Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington (2006-2007). In Paris, he is an Associated Fellow at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS). His main areas of expertise are political systems in Central Asia, Islam and religious minorities, and Central Asia’s geopolitical positioning toward China, Russia and South Asia.

He is the author or co-author of five books in French, Christians between Atheism and Islam: a regard on Religion in Soviet and Post-Soviet Central Asia (2003); Turkmenistan. A Destiny at the Crossroads of Empires(2007); co-authored with Marlene Laruelle, Russians in Kazakhstan. National Identities and New States in the Post-Soviet Space (2004), and Central Asia, the Drift Towards Authoritarianism (2006); and with Pierre Chuvin and René Letolle, History of Contemporary Central Asia (2008). He is the editor of two volumes in French, Managing Independence and the Soviet Legacy in Central Asia (2004) and Islam and Politics in the former Soviet Union (2005).

He has just published, co-authored with Marlène Laruelle, China as a Neighbor. Central Asian Perspectives and Strategies (Washington DC: Central Asia and Caucasus Institute, Silk Road Monograph, April 2009).