Richard Schmidt is the editor in charge of the Central Asian Analytical Digest (Zentralasien-Analysen) at ZOiS. Previously, he has worked as a research assistant in the research project Transformation of Urban Spaces and Religious Pluralisation in the South Caucasus at ZOiS. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Area Studies Asia/Africa and a Master of Arts in Central Asian Studies from the Humboldt University of Berlin. In addition to several research stays in the region, he completed a voluntary social year at the Information Centre of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Dushanbe in 2016. For his doctoral project in history at the Free University of Berlin, he is investigating the connection between governmental state practice, the imperial production of social space and national elite formation for the assertion of real socialist rule and social transformation in Soviet Tajikistan.