Kazan University: Western Concepts, Imperial Power and Urban Transformations in a 19th Century Russian Provincial City Introduction

Gulchachak Nugmanova is a leading researcher at the Research
Institute of the Theory and History of Architecture and Town Planning,
Moscow. She received her PhD in 2000 at the State Institute for Art
Studies in Moscow. The thesis was titled The Tatar Estate from the Middle
of 19th to the Beginning of 20th century Kazan. Nugmanova is a specialist
in modern Russian Province Architecture focusing on the Middle
Volga region whose particular features relate to the existence of a
great number of the Tatar-Muslim population. Her studies focus on
the problems of urban transformation and interaction between the
Russian imperial centre and the Kazan province in the contexts of
the imperial ideology. She is also moderator of several conferences on
regional architecture in Russia, and of a special architectural panel at
the annual conference of the Society of Central Eurasian Studies (2011,
Ohio State University, Columbus, USA). Nugmanova has compiled and
edited collective monographs and at the moment she is concluding
a monograph titled Power and the Architectural process in a Nineteenth
Century Russian Province (Kazan Province).