From 27 to 29 June 2019, the 16th Conference of the European Society for Central Asian Studies (ESCAS) was held at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom). ESCAS conferences are held biennially and bring together researchers from Central Asia on a wide range of issues: from culture and history to public administration and politics. This year’s conference, the global theme of which was “Globalization of Central Asia”, was attended by over 200 researchers who were involved in the work of 62 panels, 8 round tables, as well as two book discussions, including the draft of a new textbook.
One of the events of the conference was the discussion of the draft the textbook “Central Asia in Context: A Thematic Introduction to the Region”. Its publication is planned this year at the University of Pittsburgh (USA). In the framework of two sessions the authors of the chapters made short presentations of their parts of the book, followed by discussions of undergraduates who evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the future textbook from the perspective of students. Then there was a general discussion. Given comments, suggestions, notes were carefully recorded by the authors in order to take into account in the final version of the book.
At the conference the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan was represented by two participants. Aigul Sadvokasova spoke at the panel session “Minorities in Central Asia between the global and local” with a report on the topic of “Preservation of ethnic identity in polyethnic Kazakhstan”. Zhomart Medeuov spoke at the panel session “Regimes and Democracy” with a report on the topic “Development of democratic practices in Kazakhstan”.
More information about the conference program and speech annotations can be found here. https://escas2019.excas.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Full-Programme-with-abstracts-26-June-with-late-changes.pdf