Dilnoza Duturaeva
Lecturer in Medieval History

Profile

Biography

BA, MA, and PhD (Tashkent)

Dilnoza Duturaeva is a Lecturer in Medieval History. Before joining the Department of History in 2022 she held a DFG Research Fellowship at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and was a Senior Research Fellow at the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan. She also held a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Bonn and a Gerda Henkel Research Fellowship at the University of Nanjing. 

Duturaeva’s research explores Asian interconnections and global trade in pre-modern period. Her first book, Qarakhanid Roads to China: A History of Sino-Turkic Relations reconsiders the diplomacy, trade and geography of transcontinental networks between Central Asia and China from the 10th to the 12th centuries and challenges the concept of “the Silk Road crisis” in the period between the fall of the Tang Dynasty and the rise of the Mongols. She is currently working on a new project that deals with the history of Moghulistan and global caravan routes in the 14th-17th centuries.

She also serves as a Steering Committee Member of the Steppe Sisters Network, an international initiative dedicated to connecting and supporting women in history, archaeology and anthropology of Central Asia.

Teaching

Undergraduate

An example of modules taught:

• HIS00086C Societies & Economies in World History
• HIS00140I Before the Mongols: Nomadic Empires of Central Eurasia, 900-1200
• HIS00137H Animals

Postgraduate

An example of modules taught:

• HIS00138M Trans-Asian Trade along the Silk Roads, 1000-1199

Research

Overview

The core of Duturaeva’s research comprises the conditions and driving forces of the globalization process in Eurasia, and trade roads and networks in the pre-modern world. Her research interests are broadly concerned with global history focusing on the non-European perspective, imperial China, history of Central Asia, transregional nomadic empires, Silk Road studies, Sino-Islamic relations, diplomacy, trade, and cross-cultural exchange.

Projects

Her first book Qarakhanid Roads to China: A History of Sino-Turkic Relations (Leiden: Brill, 2022) deals with Sino-Turkic cross-cultural contacts and international relations in the pre-Mongol period and explores diplomacy and trade during the Northern Song and the Liao dynasties in China, and the first Turko-Islamic dynasties such as the Qarakhanids in Central Asia, the Ghaznavids in Afghanistan and Northern India, and the Saljuqs in Iran and Anatolia using Chinese and Central Asian sources together with archaeological and visual materials.

She is currently working on her second book project related to trans-Asian caravan routes and trade networks of Moghulistan with Ming China, Timurid/Shaybanid Central Asia, and Mughal India. The project reconsiders global caravan routes and serves to rehabilitate the connected history of late medieval and early modern Central Asia that has long been dismissed as marginal and historically unconnected in the Eurasian context.

Supervision

Duturaeva welcomes expressions of interest from prospective students who wish to pursue research on the history of medieval Central Asia and China, especially on topics related to Silk Road studies, international relations, global trade, and connectivity.