Please join CREES on Tuesday April 21 at 12pm in Bailey 318 for a brown bag lecture by Dr. Shannon O'Lear and Zachary Shearer, Department of Geography & Atmospheric Sciences. Their talk is titled "The Kaleidoscope of Karabakh: Overlapping Geopolitics of De- and Re-colonization Efforts in the South Caucasus and Beyond."

The countries of Azerbaijan and Armenia fought over the Karabakh region for decades until 2023 when Azerbaijan claimed that it had finally taken back control of the area. Since then, Azerbaijan has worked to re-make Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan’s territory and national story. As Azerbaijan builds its territorial identity, it is also moving politically away from Russia, and all of this is happening as there is growing international interest in developing a major East-West transit route through Azerbaijan and Armenia. These regional relationships over territory and control are like the view through a kaleidoscope, and they change depending on the perspective taken. In our geopolitical analysis, we use a theoretical lens of decolonization and recolonization to see how different actors exert control and gain benefit over territory. We also use a visual lens of Google Earth to show how efforts to de- and recolonize territory are evident on the ground. The kaleidoscope metaphor demonstrates the importance of considering different perspectives to understand complex dynamics of this critical region.