I am an Instructor in the History of Kazakhstan in the Department of History, Philosophy and Religious Studies at Nazarbayev University. I earned a PhD from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago under the direction of Professor John E. Woods. Other education was completed at Truman State University, where I studied medieval European and East Asian history, and at the University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. I research the transition from collective sovereignty to autocracy in the early Mongol Empire during the reigns of Ögödei, Töregene, Güyük, and Oghul Qaimiš (1227-51).

Mick Bechtel