Training Spotlight: Michelle O’Brien Travels to Tajikistan to Research War, Migration, and Community
Posted: 11/21/2017 (CSDE Research)
In her dissertation, Michelle O’Brien—a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and former CSDE Fellow and Trainee—aims to examine the long-term consequences of the Tajik Civil War on population change and migration. The Tajik civil war raged from 1992-1997, killing an estimated 60,000 and displacing a million residents to northern Tajikistan or Afghanistan. Most of the violence was concentrated in 1992 and 1993, but the experience of violence and uncertainty still emerges in discussions of daily life in Tajikistan today. To inform her research, O’Brien decided to spend the summer in Tajikistan in order to try to ‘get under the skin’ of the country. During her time there, she conducted interviews with key informants at non-government organizations that helped her understand the development strategies after the war, presented some of her preliminary quantitative findings to the United Nations Development Programme, traveled as much as she could, and made friends across the country. You can read more about O’Brien’s research and travels at the link below.