Lucas Robertson
lrober22@uwyo.edu
Shalo Seidmedove, a global and area studies graduate student, is set to attend the Midwest International Studies Conference, in Missouri.
Seidmedove will give a presentation highlighting the realities of sex trafficking, how the fall of the Russian Soviet Union contributed to worsening conditions for women in Central Asia and how those consequences have spread to surrounding European countries.
An international student from Turkmenistan, Shalo came to Wyoming for the Global and International Studies Program and was offered a full ride scholarship.
Shalo hopes to eventually earn a doctorate in Public Policy, Policy Making or Policy Agenda. After completing her masters degree through the University of Wyoming, Shalo would like to work in public service in the states before pursuing a doctorate degree.
Seidmedove is in her second year of the two-year graduate program and will graduate this May.
“I think I would like to have some more work experience, and work at international organizations and gain management skills,” Seidmedove said. “You come undergrad and right to grad school and so it’s all theory, right? You never really get to actually use that knowledge, so I think the thing so me to do after I graduate is try to find a job and see whether a Ph.D. would be a good fit later on.”
Seidmedove is no stranger to the oppression of women, and finds her presentation topic to be very relevant to an audience of people seeking to progress international health and peace.
“That’s where I’m from, and that’s something I’ve been kind of noticing and witnessing and hearing stories about, and I thought ‘Why not turn these personal stories into an academic project?’” Seidmedove said. “If you have not been to that area, you don’t know what’s going on, even if you read.”
Seidmedove said that in order to fulfill her goals of a successful career in international service, she would have to remain in the U.S.. In her home country of Turkmenistan, there are very little opportunities for a woman to succeed in such a prestigious field.
“I think here there would be more prospects for gaining work experience and gaining knowledge and contributing, compared to where I’m from. I like to say it’s (Turkmenistan) like a second North Korea,” Seidmedove said. “There’s nothing there, once you go in there it’s hard to get out.”
With first hand experience with living in a country that is heavily suppressed and, in effect, totalitarian, Seidmedove views her work as a global benefit, seeking to bring equality across the board. Her presentation at the Midwest International Studies Program will be a single step in a great many to come on her journey of global progression and freedom.
Seidmedove’s presentation will consist of a lecture paired with a Power Point Presentation that will cite international cases and documentation in which sex trafficking and the trickle down affects caused by the fall of Soviet Russia will, hopefully, gain track as a legitimate causation to the realities of global sex trafficking, as it’s understood today.
Seidmedove will present to a board of academics and acclaimed/accomplished people in the fields of area and global work, who will then in turn evaluate her work and decide whether it is worthy to progress to the international conference stage.
Regardless of the impression her presentation makes on the board at the Midwest International Studies Conference, Seidmedove is determined to create a life that serves the less fortunate and victims of governmental suppression and subjugation.
