Yana PAK

Dr. Yana Pak is a sociologist, and a post-doctoral fellow at the “Asian Religious Connections” cluster, the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HKIHSS), The University of Hong Kong.

Trained in sociology and philosophy, she obtained her PhD at the EHESS (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences).  Her thesis “ A Spirit of Post-Soviet Muslim Capitalism? Sociology of an Economic and Religious Entrepreneurial Network in Southern Kazakhstan since 1991” aimed to analyze the emergence and confessionalization of new forms of solidarity groups nourished by local values and subjectivities, specifically focusing on Islamic economy in the post-Soviet Central Asian context with both national and transnational implications. Her research interests and regional specialization are Central Asia, and Kazakhstan in particular, where she conducted long-term sociological fieldwork from 2015 to 2023 on the local networks of entrepreneurs and modernity.