Comparative and International Higher Education Policy Specialist; Focus on Central Asia
Protests in Kazakhstan have put higher education in the country on hold and the start of term postponed, while many students remain stranded abroad. My Kazakhstan-based colleague Dana Abdrasheva and I wrote about the latest situation and the implications for higher education for University World News. Here's a reprint of the article that was published on …
Continue reading Kazakhstan: Higher education on hold at home, students stranded abroad
Kazakhstan is in the world's headlines after a series of protests that started over energy price hikes rapidly escalated and continue to unfold at the time of writing this on 7 January 2022. The involvement of Russia into the situation in Kazakhstan just a couple of days into events has set off alarm bells and …
Continue reading Kazakhstan, Russia, and the international students caught in between
With a lineage that goes back well over a thousand years, it might seem surprising that political science in Uzbekistan is considered a relatively new subject for teaching and research. Why yes, we can talk politics in Uzbekistan (as of 2019) As pointed in an excellent review of the development of political science recently published …
Continue reading Politics with pedigree: Tracing the long history of political science in Uzbekistan
Can Tajikistan's large and growing diasporic population be harnessed to promote alternative visions for the country's future?
Uzbekistan watchers must be exhausted with the near-constant flow of news about reforms in the country, but as the reforms appear to be supporting people in the country to live better and happier lives, this is a fatigue worth accepting. I've written a summary of the reforms that are affecting higher education and about a wave …
Continue reading Politics is back (on the curriculum) in Uzbekistan
I realized I didn't blog about a recently published article I co-authored with Prof Creso Sá, my supervisor at the University of Toronto. How remiss of me! (?!) So, let me tell you about our article, The politics of the great brain race: Public policy and international student recruitment in Australia, Canada, England and the USA, …
Continue reading New(ish) publication: The politics of the great brain race
After a break from blogging to attend the recent and quite fantastic World Cup in Russia, I'm back with the good news that I have a new publication out. This is a book chapter co-written with my supervisor Professor Creso Sá and is titled Scientific nationalism in a globalizing world. It's part of a hefty new Handbook …
Continue reading New publication: Scientific nationalism in a globalizing world
Imagine you were unjustly accused of massive corruption and fired from your job. It's an indignity. But then imagine that you've been fighting for well over a decade in no fewer than 14 courts to clear your name, each time with an unsatisfactory ending - or simply no real conclusion at all. During that time, …
In my most recent post, Protests? What protests?, I discussed recent protests both against and in favour of the government in Tajikistan. Following up on this, I want to share an excellent and highly informative article from Russian-language site Fergana News, which Open Democracy has reproduced with permission and translated into English. The article, provocatively called Tajikistan's imitation …
Continue reading Paid to protest: More on student protests in Tajikistan
This mini-series on the year ahead for Central Asia was kicked off with a global analysis of the opportunities and challenges facing the region by Kazakh thinktank Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of Kazakhstan (KazISS) and was inspired by two early January stories on the broader future for Central Asia. This second part draws on …
Emma Sabzalieva 