Europe and Central Asia
Special Interest Group (ECA)
About Us
Europe and Central Asia SIG was founded in 2009 as Eurasia SIG to bring together scholars, researchers, and practitioners concerned with educational reform in post-Soviet countries. In the early days of the group, the goal was to promote scholarship focused on all levels of education in the countries of the region, which was then referred to as Eurasia. Over time, the group has managed to cultivate much significant and policy-relevant research on educational transformation in the region, raise the global visibility of this research, facilitate the development of local research capacity, and expand its membership to include a growing number of scholars from the Caucasus, Russia, Central Asia, Ukraine and Belarus.
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In 2024, the SIG has changed its name to Europe and Central Asia SIG. This has been necessitated by the geopolitical changes in the region, diverging educational reform pathways of the post-Soviet countries, lessening influence of the Soviet legacy on the process of educational transformation, and growing connection with and influence on the post-Soviet educational scholars and reformers of Greater Europe. We have become increasingly aware of the formation of the larger European and Central Asian education space and decided to expand our membership to scholars from Western, Eastern, and Central Europe, who are interested in understanding the educational reform process in the larger ECA education area from the comparative and international education perspectives.
Elected Committee 2023-2024
Aliya Kuzhabekova - Faculty/Senior Co-Chair (aliya.kuzhabekova [at] ucalgary [dot] ca)
Max Antony-Newman - Emerging/Junior Co-Chair
(max.antony-newman [at] glasgow[dot] ac [dot] uk)
Mokhidil Mamasolieva - Emerging/Junior Co-Chair
(m.mamasolieva [at]Surrey[dot]ac[dot]uk)
Dilraba Anayatova - Secretary/Treasurer
(danayato[at]asu[dot]edu)
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