Vikentiy Parshuto received his BA in Iranian Studies at Saint Petersburg State University in Russia in 2020, with a BA thesis on the question of fraternal property ownership patterns in Bactria through the Bactrian Documents from northern Afghanistan. From the first year of his studies, he also began participating in the Panjikent expedition in Tajikistan. He then went on to complete his MA at Higher School of Economics, Classical and Oriental Archaeology department in Moscow. In his MA thesis, he continued his engagement with the Bactrian Documents, but expanded his methodological approach to draw documentary evidence into dialogue with the archaeological, examining the vocabulary used in the documents to refer to settlements (e.g. λιζο and ϸαρο), and their intersection with the archaeology of the site of Kafyrkala in the Vakhsh region of Tajikistan.
He has been working on archaeological excavations for since the age of eleven including at sites across Russia (Scythian kurgans in Tuva, a Neolithic site in Leningrad region, Novgorod) and Ukraine (Chersonesus in Crimea), but for the last seven years he has been primarily active in Central Asia, including on the Panjikent expedition, as well as other projects in Tajikistan (Hisorak, Darvaz), and Uzbekistan (Paikend, Bukhara).
At ISAW, Vikentiy will pursue his studies in both the history and archaeology of Bactria-Tukharistan in the fourth to eighth centuries CE. He maintains current research interests in the history of administration and legal frameworks in the region, the ancient economy, transregional connections with other areas of Central Asia and broader Eurasia, and questions of comparative urbanism in Bactria-Tukharistan and Sogdiana.