Vera Smirnova, K-State

I am a human geographer with research interests at the intersection of territorial governance, land policy, and legal geography. My research examines how land and power intersect to shape governance frameworks, institutions, and everyday spatial practices in post-socialist and authoritarian contexts. I study how property regimes, land tenure systems, and land management practices are enacted and contested, influencing access and dispossession across different scales - from local communities to the state. My current research investigates how large-scale foreign investments in farmland reshape territorial governance and national security responses through land legislation in the Eurasian region.

I am originally from a Soviet mono-industrial town in the Russian North. Since completing my Ph.D. at the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech, I was a Postdoctoral research fellow at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Currently, I work as an assistant professor in the Departments of Geography and Political Science, at Kansas State University, and as an ajunct researcher at the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas.

My work has appeared in journals, including Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, and Geoforum among others. I am active member of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the American Association of Geographers, where I chair the Eurasian Geography Specialty Group.