University of Cambridge

Faculty Member, Cambridge Central Asia Forum

Chairman and Director

Jesus College, Cambridge

About

Siddharth Saxena is Chairperson of the Cambridge Central Asia Forum and Honorary Secretary of the Committee for Central and Inner Asia. He is a Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge and He is also a Senior Research Associate and College Lecturer in Physics. He was awarded the 2006 IUPAP Young Scientist Medal in the field of magnetism. He was awarded honorary professorship and honorary doctorate by the the Kazakh-Turkish International University, Turkistan, Kazakhstan in November 2009

He trained as a physicist, anthropologist and historian.  His social science research interests are in the areas of religion and identity, knowledge systems and institutional history of Central Asia and the Middle East. One technical side his expertise is in Experimental Physics, Chemistry and instrumentation development.

Current key projects he is focusing on include a study of notions of eastern cosmopolitanism in Bukhara and development of the concept of ‘projected commonality’ along with an ethnographic study of Challa, the ‘Muslim Jews’, of Central Asia. He also directs the Cambridge project on documenting inter-linkages between environment, culture and education through mapping of local knowledge systems in Ferghana Valley. This historical and anthropological research is done in conjunction with some policy related projects like understanding of social development in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation realm, dialogue between the Muslim world and the West and Environmental Security of the Central Asian Region..

He has set up high-pressure cell company, CAMCELL, in 2006. and also advises the Governments and UNESCO, UNIFEM, UNDP for education in Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Middle East. Portfolio of advice held up to cabinet and ministerial level.

He has been a EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow, Sarah Woodhead Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge, a Fellow at University College, London and at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, after completing a PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1997. He also has completed Doctoral degree in Social Anthropology.

Recently, he has been an organiser and session-chair at the Gordon Conference on Superconductivity, SCES conference and Conference Chair of QCCM. He has been invited to speak at more than 60 international conferences. He has been awarded grants from the EPSRC, the Royal Society and the European Science Foundation, KAIST (Korea Cambridge Collaboration) and Neutron and X-Ray time at sources in UK and abroad.

Siddharth Saxena has served as consultant to several international organisations in the UN system and otherwise and is on Cambridge Middle East working group, Cambridge India Partnership Group, Cambridge International Development Forum (China), Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit Management Committee, UK India Business Forum next Generation Advisory Board, British Uzbek and Kazakhs Society Boards. He guides a number of institutional development projects in Central Asia.
 

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