Emma Harden-Wolfson

Higher education in Central Asia blog

  • Raising the roof on students’ cost of living in Uzbekistan

    The cost of living crisis is the number one concern for Gen Zs and millennials who make up most of today’s students. Rising costs and inflation around the world are leading to alarming levels of housing and food insecurity and anxiety among students. The briefest of searches provides examples from Canada, Japan, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Read more

  • How Kazakhstan’s Gen Z is responding to a changing world

    What do you get if you combine an uptick in the scale and frequency of intractable global issues, care for student agency, expertise in Central Asia, and an interest in exploring visual research methods? The answer – fortunately – is not a joke! Even better, it’s a new article by me and Dr Dana Abdrasheva Read more

  • Academics under threat in Central Asia

    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 Read more

  • Data on female university leaders – new University World News article

    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 Read more

  • Current and emerging issues in gender equality in education in Central Asia – new book chapter

    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 first book to be published (in any language) on gender and education Read more

  • Remodelling research in Kazakhstan

    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… In the world of Central Asian higher education, Kazakhstan continues to remodel, reform and reorganize. Here are just a couple of recent examples of Read more