By drawing upon the conceptual approaches afforded by the recent “archival turn,” this research track pursues the examination of practices of information-gathering and knowledge production on the Muslim communities inhabiting the vast area encompassing Inner Asia, Siberia, Central Asia and the Caucasus from the formation of the Rus’ to the end of the Soviet Union. Seeking to bring Islamic studies in conversation with archival science, the Commission will undertake to produce a history of the institutions, scholars, and bureaucrats who were behind the creation of the imperial and Soviet repositories that today preserve records about Islam and Muslim communities in Central Eurasia.