Near and Middle Eastern Studies

Roman Pomeshchikov

Ph.D. Candidate in Near and Middle Eastern Interdisciplinary Studies
M.A. in Global Political Economy, University of Kassel, Germany
B.A. in International Relations, University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Uzbekistan

 

My broader research and teaching interests include media, technology, and politics in the contemporary Middle East; comparative politics of state and society; and digital government and public administration reforms in Turkey and Uzbekistan.

My current research looks at digital government reforms in Turkey and Uzbekistan. My doctoral dissertation, titled, “The politics of digital transformation and bureaucratic change in Turkey and Uzbekistan” sets out an interdisciplinary research at the intersection of science and technology studies, comparative politics, and the literature on transboundary flows of socio-technical systems. It seeks to examine the state-level adoption of  information and communication technologies (ICTs) in public administration through the “Electronic Government” reforms in Turkey and Uzbekistan. 

A second project runs in collaboration with Prof. Hans Jochen Scholl (UW iSchool) and explores early regulatory approaches to distributed ledger technology (DLT)/Blockchain-based service provision. Within that project and in co-authorship with Prof. Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar  (University of Granada), we have recently completed a preliminary comparative case study of Gibraltar’s, Liechtenstein’s, and Malta’s regulatory approaches and presented its results at the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) (our publication is available at http://hdl.handle.net/10125/63957). Our book chapter on Stakeholders’ Perspectives on Benefits and Challenges in Blockchain Regulatory Frameworks can be found in Blockchain and the Public Sector (Springer-Nature; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55746-1)