GCRF COMPASS Conference on 'Tajikistan and Cultural Diplomacy in Central Asia and Eurasia'

 
Tajik National University In collaboration with Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Industry and New Technologies, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan and the Public Council under the President of Tajikistan.
 
16-17 September 2019
 
Goals and objectives: The National Development Strategy (NDS) of the Republic of Tajikistan up to the period of 2030 is based on three pillars for future development: (1) prevention diplomacy in reducing vulnerability, (2) industrialisation (effective use of national resources) and (3) innovativeness in activity.
 
On-going critical discussions and debates, raised by the NDS, are widening national space due to international projects, such as GCRF COMPASS. Identifying a huge natural resource and the demography of Tajikistan along with its historically formed cultural diplomacy, however, discussants highlighted a number of problems. One of them is a gap between academic-educational research integration between Tajikistan and EU/UK as a consequence of the civil war of 1992-1997 and the ‘brain drain’, followed by the lack of investments into science and cultures. Though from 2010 the legacy of Tajikistan-EU, led by the President of the country Emomali Rahmon, is developing steadily, Tajikistan receives the smallest part from the EU/UK Research and Innovation Funding. Obviously enough, many aspects of the solution of that problem depends on activity of cultural diplomacy and the right representing of the human capital of Tajikistan in the region and beyond, expressed in the research and communication.        
 
What is the role of Cultural Diplomacy in all diversity of its forms in the country and beyond? Where are the cognitive points of meeting of that diversification? If political hierarchy of the past as the rigid order of subordination, namely, that of “developing” states dominated by the “developed”, is gradually facing the past, what is the role of Cultural Diplomacy in creation of the new balance in the region and wider, in Eurasia? What is the ethics of Cultural Diplomacy of the New Silk Road with its ‘one economy, one belt’, as a new statement?  
 
Cultural Diplomacy in Tajikistan, in Central Asia and the Caucasus as well as Eurasia, will be discussed at this conference, organised by the Tajik National University, in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Tajikistan; the Ministry of Education and Science; the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies; and the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan. The conference will be led by Kent University (UK) in principal partnership with University of Cambridge (UK), ADA
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University (Azerbaijan), Belarusian State University (Belarus) and the University of World Economy and Diplomacy (Uzbekistan). 
 
We are looking forward to two days of discussions and debates about how to encourage our young generation of researchers and actors of national/international cultures to be more active within the globalising world, opening a new stage in research integration, impact of the governance and sustainable development in the country, in Central Asia, as a holistic region in all its diversity and in Eurasia, as a supercontinent. Undoubtedly, the doors of the conference are open for those who want to participate in this international gathering of minds from Eurasia and beyond.
 
Dr Munira Shahidi National team leader of GCRF COMPASS, Tajik National University
 
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The GCRF COMPASS project (ES/P010849/1, 2017-21) is an ambitious UK government capacity-building funding initiative, aiming to extend UK research globally, to address the challenges of growth and sustainability in the developing countries. Notably, the COMPASS project at the University of Kent, together with Cambridge University as research partner, seeks to establish ‘the hubs of excellence’ at the toplevel HEIs in Belarus, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, to enable them to become the centres for knowledge sharing and transfer for research integration, impact governance, and sustainable communities.  *** We wish to record our special gratitude to Tajik Ambassador, HE Masud Khalifazoda, the Tajik Embassy in London, and HE Mathew Lawson and the UK Embassy in Dushanbe. We furthermore want to thank the Tajik National University team under the leadership of Professor Munira Shahidi, as well as Kh. Samiev, F. Salimov. Our special thanks to the COMPASS Postdoctoral Researchers –Dr Diana T. Kudaibergenova, Dr Eske van Gils, and Dr Irina Petrova, – for their assistance in the organisation of this event.
 

The full program can be found here.