Professor Reuel Hanks from the Dept. of Geography, Oklahoma University,  has been an ANU Research School of Social Sciences Visiting Fellow based at CAIS. On 27 June he led a workshop entitled 'Interrogating Identiscapes: Articulating spatial parameters from fieldwork in Kazakhstan'. His talk was well received by an audience of Central Asian research scholars and CAIS academics. Professor Hanks demonstrated and discussed his research into the concepts of identity and territoriality in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. With layers of history and ethnicity, Central Asia is socially and politically complex. Professor Hanks' current research is attempting to ascertain how the younger generation of Kazaks affiliate within and between different ethnicities. Based on his extensive research in Kazakhstan, he shared observations on how to articulate spatial parameters as part of the social sciences methodology.

Reuel R. Hanks is Professor of Geography at Oklahoma State University and holds the Humphreys Endowed Chair of International Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. He has taught geography for more than 30 years, including a wide variety of thematic and regional courses. His research focuses on national identity, geopolitics, international security, and regional development. Dr Hanks was a Fulbright Scholar in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and has published three books and more than 30 articles and book chapters on national identity, Islam, security issues and political geography in Central Asia.