Sarah Cameron

Member-at-large Candidate

Sarah Cameron is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, with research interests in genocide and crimes against humanity, environmental history, and the societies and cultures of Central Asia. Broadly, her work has explored how greater attention to the Soviet Union’s eastern periphery might challenge conventional understandings of the Soviet field. In her research and teaching, she enjoys tackling historical topics that have broad public resonance, both in the region and in the West. 

Her book on the Kazakh famine of the 1930s, The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan (Cornell University Press, 2018), won numerous awards, including the Reginald Zelnik and W. Bruce Lincoln book prizes from ASEEES. It also provoked intense discussion in Kazakhstan where the famine remains a largely forbidden topic, in part due to the country’s close relationship with Russia. Russian, Kazakh, and Ukrainian (forthcoming) translations of the book have been released. At present, she is working on new book, Aral: Life and Death of a Sea, about the causes and consequences of the demise of the Aral Sea.  In 2022, she was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.  

Cameron places a high value on the personal and professional networks that ASEEES helps facilitate.  In 2025, she will serve as the convention program committee chair.  She sees the diversity of ASEEES as one of its strengths and hopes to contribute to the organization’s outreach to researchers in the region, scholars of color, and communities beyond academia. Cameron also recognizes the important role the Association plays in supporting younger scholars and hopes to assist efforts to make our organization a welcoming community.