This past Thursday (October 15) I had the pleasure of attending Mara Hunter's talk: The Sea of Azov in Historical Perspective. To start I want to highlight the importance of Mara’s topic, I believe that she complicated the role of the Sea of Azov in geopolitics in a really smart and sharp way. Providing more depth to Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine and the longer struggle surrounding the Sea, and infrastructure. One of the highlights was her engagement with how US and global media covered the construction of the Crimean bridge, framing it as a vanity project, an interpretation which she argues is incorrect.
Following her presentation there was an open Q+A, where audience members posed some really fascinating questions about the work Mara is doing. There were some especially astute questions about international law and its relationship to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and to the many issues surrounding the Sea of Azov and Crimean Bridge. To that end, I was impressed by the applicability of the project and Mara’s emphasis that this is just the surface of a complicated issue. She ended by calling for other researchers to build on the work she is doing, and to look at the Sea of Azov in new and critical ways.