Victoria Clement

Dr. Victoria Clement has been studying and analyzing Central Asia since her first trip to the Soviet Union in 1985. She has decades of experience developing, executing, and presenting educational and analytical materials to non-profit, academic, diplomatic, and U.S. Department of Defense communities. She has taught at the Naval Postgraduate School, the University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana, and the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. In 2012, she was the U.S. Embassy Policy Specialist in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. She has broad experience delivering lectures, presenting at academic conferences, writing for think tanks, and appearing before U.S., Turkish, Turkmen, Kazakh, Uzbek, and British government representatives. She has written for such outlets as The Diplomat, Kennan Institute, Central Asian Analytical Network, American Foreign Policy Council/Institute for Security & Development Policy and Atlantic Council.

Clement’s book Learning to Become Turkmen: Literacy, Language, and Power, 1914-2014, was the first book in English to be based on research from Turkmenistan’s archives. The author of a dozen book chapters, Clement has also published articles in scholarly journals including: Nations and Nationalism, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, and European Education. Clement has received awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, International Research and Exchanges Program (IREX), American Councils for International Education Regional Scholar Exchange Program (ACTR/ACCELS), National Council for East European & Eurasian Research (NCEEER), and the Open Society Institute.

With knowledge of the Turkish language, Clement also has a deep interest in history, culture, and politics in Turkey. In 2012, she led a Track II Strategic Dialogue in Istanbul, Turkey with a grant from Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). She has written about Turkey for Middle East Studies Insights and has been on the Board of Güvenlik Stratejiler Dergisi/The Journal of Security Strategies. Clement is on the Board of Directors for the foundation Arzuw (Wish) Foundation, a non-profit organization that awards scholarships and loans to students from Turkmenistan.