It’s a leaf straight out of the authoritarian playbook. You don’t like what someone has to say? There’s a risk that they might speak out against the government or its practices? Suppress them. You have a number of options here. Fire them. Threaten their family. Arrest them on spurious charges. Throw them in jail. Remove their right to leave the country.

I promised more from our new book chapter on gender and education in Central Asia and here you have it! As part of our exploration of the available data on gender and education, co-author Lyazzat Shakirova and I decided to look for statistics on women in leadership roles in the region. This could help increase our understanding of whether, for example, greater educational attainment for girls/women leads to greater presence in leadership roles, and what role other structural factors might be playing.

This might just be the most beautiful book cover out there. It features atlas/adras (patterned silk/cotton fabric) typical of the Central Asian countries. New publication alert! I'm delighted to have a co-authored chapter out in the new title, Gender and Education in Central Asia, ably edited by Aliya Kuzhabekova, Naureen Durrani and Zumrad Kataeva. There's much to celebrate here, including the fact that this is the…

Happy new year to one and all! I hope 2025 is a good one for you and for the world - and I hope I don't regret saying that come December... Research cat is ready for action In the world of Central Asian higher education, Kazakhstan continues to remodel, reform and reorganize. Here are just a couple of recent examples of proposed changes to research, which is increasingly lauded as a key part of the higher education and science system.