Building on my research within the HistoGenes project, this study investigates the Carpathian Basin and the Pontic-Caspian Steppe during the Early Middle Ages (4th–10th centuries) through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates written sources, archaeological data, numismatic evidence, and analyses of ancient DNA and isotopes. Its primary aim is to illuminate the processes of integration and fragmentation between local communities and incoming groups. The research examines how Latin- and Greek-speaking elites adapted ancient notions of identity and employed strategies of othering to preserve social boundaries, while simultaneously enabling various cultural brokers and diplomatic mediators to cross these divides. Through both diachronic and synchronic analyses of steppe empires, the project highlights the diverse theories and practices of power developed within these polities, shaped by their interactions with Central Asian states, Byzantium, the Carolingian Empire, and the Arab Caliphate. Finally, the project explores social and cultural practices—such as dietary habits and marriage strategies—that emerged following the formation and consolidation of steppe empires, revealing patterns of cultural transfer and acculturation.​

This project explores how master narratives about Eurasian nomads both shaped and were shaped by the scholarly research landscape, political climate, and cultural trends in Late Imperial Russia, among Russian émigré communities, and in the Soviet Union up to the 1960s. By analyzing publications, memoirs, diaries, and correspondence from Russian-speaking historians and archaeologists, it examines the political dimensions of consensus-building around historical memory, both within academic circles and the broader public sphere. The project focuses on studies of ethnogenesis, state formation, and migration related to early medieval peoples inhabiting the steppe frontier. These groups were variously portrayed as ancestral or alien, depending on the scholars’ political convictions and the prevailing geopolitical context. Through this lens, the project offers case studies on the political (mis)uses of early European history, extending beyond the more familiar ‘memory wars’ surrounding the legacy of Kyivan Rus’ and the origins of the Slavs. It investigates the influence of imperial ideologies, Marxist theory, nation-building agendas, and Eurasianist thought on the development of medieval studies. Ultimately, the project seeks to foster critical reflection within the disciplines of history and archaeology, while exploring how a reimagined concept of ‘Eurasia’ might help transcend both Eurocentrism and Orientalism.