Emma Harden-Wolfson

Higher education in Central Asia blog

  • The end of the affair… for now

    Well, it took two weeks but the Russian and Estonian pilots have today been released from jail after their sentences were reduced to 2,5 years, of which they’ve served six months and the remaining two years were pardoned. Are you surprised? No, I thought not. Me neither. So how will both sides recover from what… Read more

  • Straws on a camel’s back

    The “aeroplane affair” between Russia and Tajikistan, as I suspected, shows no sign of landing (excuse the pun) anytime soon. Konstantin Parshin has – again – written an excellent article summarising what’s happened over the last few days, so if you’re not following this story elsewhere (and even if you are), do read what he has to… Read more

  • Russian pilots and Tajik workers, or How to lose friends and alienate people

    For the last few weeks, I haven’t had any interesting stories to report under my favourite ‘bureaucratic madness’ category. Central Asia seems to have been a pretty sensible place of late. However, I’m pleased to report that the Tajik government is back on form with a new episode of red tape craziness. As I’ve suggested… Read more

  • Why study abroad?

    I’ve just had a conference paper proposal accepted and so have been thinking in some detail about study abroad, the subject of my paper. The conference is called ‘Micro-level analysis of well-being in Central Asia’ and will be held at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin next May. My paper will be looking… Read more

  • Developments in Central Asian higher education, part 1

    This is the first part of what I plan to be a monthly update on developments in higher education in Central Asia. As I mentioned in my first post on this blog, there is very little research into higher education in Central Asia, and what exists is often commissioned by external donors such as international… Read more

  • A meeting with Hillary Clinton

    When I entered the Social Hall at the Ismaili Centre Dushanbe [the location for Clinton’s talk], it was full. There was no place to sit, even though I thought that I came early. There were school pupils, students, media, representatives from different NGOs and others. We waited for about an hour and finally she came… Read more