Yipeng Zhou

I am a Ph.D. student in the History Department. My current scholarly interests revolve around the history of metal mining in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, with regional focuses on the Urals, Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Armenia. For my doctoral dissertation, I look into the longue durée of mining development in these regions from the 18th through the 20th centuries and compare different mining trajectories within the same “imperial family,” under similar regulatory and financial frameworks. I am interested in questions regarding property relations, infrastructures, supply chains, environmental health, and the financing and cultures of mining. I aim to reveal multiple, multiscalar, and sometimes overlaying historical, cultural, socioeconomic, and geophysical layers of mining in the places of my interest, and contribute to the enduring debates among historians on empire, colonization, and continuity vis-à-vis change.