Over on Kazakh social media, something rather brilliant is happening.
At the end of March, a new Yvision (a trilingual Kazakh blogging platform) blog was set up to support an Instagram account that’s already been in operation for several months. The aim of the blog and Instagram accounts are to promote a very exciting project:
The project is a collaboration by 16 female PhD students, all from Kazakhstan, and all doing their graduate work abroad. Between them, they’re studying pretty much all of the hard and social sciences, covering everything from nanotechnology to education.
Their aim is to share news and views about their research, showing others (particularly women, though everyone will enjoy their posts) what it’s like to study and live abroad. This is also a form of community engagement, as they say on their site:
Мы считаем, что образование – это сила, а наука должна быть ближе к людям.
We believe that education is a strength, and science/research should be closer to people.
For those you on Instagram, you can read new posts from the team every Thursday (in Russian). They’ve already covered topics varying from real women in science about female academics they’ve had the chance to meet in person, updates on their research, advice on writing a thesis and they’ve even posted about their mums (I love that one a lot).
The team are on the look out for new recruits: if you are a woman from Kazakhstan, doing research (whether PhD, a post-doc or researching in industry), and willing to ‘write, write and write some more’ as they put it, then I encourage you to reach out.
This is a wonderful and very visual way to make two very daunting prospects – doing a PhD/advanced research and studying/living abroad – and doing both of those things as a Kazakh woman – feel real and manageable. I have learned a lot from the generosity of the women prepared to share their own thoughts and experiences, and hope others will too.
Go KZPHDGIRLSUNION!
Thanks to Olga Mun for sharing this brilliant initiative on Twitter!
Emma Harden-Wolfson 
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