Dr Irna Hofman

Irna Hofman is a rural sociologist, specialised in agrarian and social change in Central Asia. She has carried out extensive periods of research in Tajikistan since 2012, and previously also worked in Uzbekistan.

Irna recently completed post-doctoral research at Oxford's Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies as part of an ERC-funded project "China, law and development."

She obtained her Ph.D. from Leiden University, the Netherlands in 2019, with a dissertation focussed on the political economy of agrarian transformation in Tajikistan: "Cotton, control, and continuity in disguise: The political economy of agrarian transformation in lowland Tajikistan."

Prior to that, Irna was a junior researcher at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) in Bonn (2007-2008), taking part in an interdisciplinary (BMBF/UNESCO financed) project titled "Economic and ecological restructuring of land and water use in Khorezm, Uzbekistan."

She holds an B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in Environmental Sciences (Environmental Policy), with minors in Rural Development Sociology, and Rural Sociology, respectively, from Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

Irna is member of the advisory board of the TRANSECT research project at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE), Germany, and also actively engages in policy advice and outreach. In the capacity of social expert Irna is currently involved in a study for the European Union, implemented by Agrinatura: Value Chain Analysis for Development (VCA4D): The cotton sector of Tajikistan. In recent years Irna has also advised various international organisations working in and on Central Asia, with a focus on rural development, water management, gender, migration and conflict. Irna is also affiliated with a knowledge hub focussed on EU-Central Asia relations (EUCAM) in Groningen, the Netherlands.

Irna's research interests are broad and sit at the intersection of political economy, political ecology, and political sociology. In recent years, her focus has narrowed down to centre on rural labour, gender, and commodity politics, (currently) with a focus on the Global East.

Irna is currently completing a monograph focussed on the political economy of cotton in Tajikistan, which is based on her dissertation and post-doctoral research projects. Her research agenda for the coming years focus on shifting geographies of production, rural labour, and cotton; and, China's growing assertiveness in the global agrifood regime, examined from below.

Irna is excited about ethnography and multi-scalar/sited research in and beyond Central Asia, and welcomes Ph.D. and MA/M.Sc. students for questions or supervision requests. Irna is currently involved as mentor in the British Academy financed USTA Mentorship programme. Between 2011 and 2017, she taught at Leiden University (Asia Studies), and in 2020-2021 taught courses at the National University of Tajikistan.

• Hofman, I. (2021) Migration, crop diversification, and adverse incorporation: Understanding the repertoire of contention in rural Tajikistan. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 42(4): 499-518.
• Hofman, I. and Visser, O. (2021) Towards a geography of window dressing and benign neglect: The state, donors and elites in Tajikistan’s trajectories of post-Soviet agrarian change. Land Use Policy, 111.
• Hofman, I., Visser, O. and Kalinovsky, A. (2020) Introduction: Encounters after the Soviet collapse: The contemporary Chinese presence in the former Soviet Union border zone (Special issue introduction). Problems of Post Communism, 67(3): 193-203.
• Hofman, I. (2018) Soft budgets and elastic debt: Farm liabilities in the agrarian political economy of post-Soviet Tajikistan. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45(7): 1360-81.

Book chapters (selected)

• Pase, A., Hofman, I., Kronenburg García, A., Haller, T., Giger, M., Bertoncin, M.  and Warner, J. (2022) Large scale agricultural investments in drylands: Facing some blind spots in the grabbing debate. In, Kronenburg García, A., Haller, T., van Dijk, H., Samimi, C. and Warner, J. (eds.) Drylands Facing Change: Interventions, investments and identities. pp. 73-92. London: Routledge.
• Hofman, I. (2018) Politics or profits along the “Silk Road”: What drives Chinese farms in Tajikistan and helps them thrive? In, Yeh, E.T. (ed.) The geoeconomics and geopolitics of Chinese development and investment in Asia. pp. 183-208. Oxford: Routledge.

Commentaries, op-eds and blogs (selected)

• Hofman, I. (2023) Bim and bumpy roads in Tajikistan: A dog as guard and companion "in the field". Rural Sociology Weblog, 23 March 2023.
• Hofman, I. (2022) Just working for wood: life inside Tajikistan’s silk industry. Open Democracy, 11 August.
• Hofman, I. (2022) Markets beyond India. The global lives of Indian cotton:  A digital story map by Andrew Flachs.
• Hofman, I. (2022) Cotton scale. The History of Soviet Central Asia in 100 objects, University of Oxford.
• Hofman, I. (2022) Tajikistan. The people's map of global China.
• Hofman, I. (2021) In the interstices of patriarchal order: Spaces of female agency in Chinese-Tajik labour encounters. Made in China, #2 May-August 2021.
• Hofman, I. (2021) Chinese cotton diplomacy in Tajikistan: greasing the ties by reviving the cotton economy. CLD Research Brief No 8/2021, University of Oxford.
• Hofman, I. (2021) “Our homeland is where the money is”: pragmatic citizenship in Tajikistan. Open Democracy, 7 April.