Scott Levi, Associate Professor, Department of History, was awarded an NEH Fellowship for his current research project, Central Asia on the Frontier of Empires: The Khanate of Khoqand, 1709–1876. This project aims to produce the first book to focus direct attention on the ways that early modern Central Asia actively engaged with the globalizing world. The book will also represent the first English-language history of the Khanate of Khoqand, an extraordinarily dynamic state that emerged during the eighteenth century in eastern Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Valley. The study will analyze ways that global political, economic, technological and environmental developments influenced life in early modern Central Asia and contributed to the rise, and fall, of Khoqand. It will also illustrate the ways that Central Asians influenced the policies of their much larger imperial neighbors on the Eurasian periphery.