Zamira Abman, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Comparative International Studies
CINTS Program Director & Advisor
also in History
College of Arts and Letters
SDSU
Bio
Zamira Abman is Assistant Professor of History and Comparative International Studies (CINTS) at San Diego State University, where she also serves as the Program Director and Undergraduate Advisor for CINTS. A historian of Soviet Central Asia, the Soviet Union, and modern Russia, her research centers on gender, identity, borderland, and water wars.
Her first book, Coerced Liberation: Muslim Women in Soviet Tajikistan (University of Toronto Press, 2024), examines the Soviet modernization campaign and its complex and contradictory impact on Muslim women’s lives. Her scholarship has appeared in The Palgrave Handbook of Soviet Women’s History and in Central Asian Survey, where she has published research on Chala—descendants of forcibly converted Persianate Jewry in Central Asia—and the gendered dimension of the crypto-Jewish Muslim identity.
Dr. Abman is currently completing her second book manuscript, Bridging Worlds: The History of the Chala—Jewish-Muslims in Soviet Tajikistan, under contract with the University of Toronto Press. Drawing on extensive oral histories and archival research, the project explores memory, genealogy, state enumeration, Soviet nationality policy, and intergenerational trauma among marginalized communities navigating shifting political regimes.
Her recent research, supported by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), examines resource conflict and “water wars” in northern Tajikistan. She has submitted a related article to the Central Asian Survey (February 2026). She is also developing a new project on Muslim women’s lives in post-Soviet Tajikistan, extending her engagement with gender, state power, and social transformation.
At San Diego State University, Dr. Abman teaches a wide range of interdisciplinary courses, including Soviet and Russian history, Women in Muslim Societies, Modern Middle East, Middle East and Gender, World History, Western Civilization, and senior capstone seminars. Her teaching reflects her commitment to connecting regional histories to global questions of empire, modernity, and social change.
Dr. Abman earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She holds a B.A. in American Studies and International and Comparative Politics from the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, and an M.A. in International Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution from the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame. Before entering academia, she worked with international organizations including The Carter Center and Counterpart International, contributing to development and peacebuilding initiatives in the United States, West Africa, and Central Asia.
Areas of Specialization
Gender in Soviet Central Asia; Soviet and Eurasian history; Muslim communities, identity, and memory; Jewish-Muslim (Chala) identity; Soviet national delimitation, borderlands, and resource conflict