Multi Sector Research Groups
The Center for Policy Research & Outreach (CPRO) is structured around Multisector Research Groups. Each Multisector Research Group (MRG) is led by a full-time Research Fellow producing research and engaging others around the theme.
Human Capital & Decent Work
WIUT researchers have been examining issues around agricultural labor, the national education system, skills and workplace productivity for years. The country’s national employment strategy highlights the importance of jobs and growing new and better work for its people.
Agriculture and Rural Development
With partners from IFPRI, ILO, and the ADB, WIUT has established itself as a leader in agricultural economics and rural policy. This broad multi-sector area includes the unique challenges of areas in transition, from migration and quality of services to the ramifications for housing, health, and education in rural areas.
Silk Road Connectivity
With recent heavy investment in transportation, energy, and trade along this large corridor, there remain many challenges and questions for researchers to explore from a multidisciplinary perspective. As relationships across Central Asia have warmed, there is continued interest in the development of resources, such as water, across borders.
Futures & Foresight
CPRO Futures & Foresight publishes articles which focus on methods that aid anticipation of the future in various sectors. We use international experience and methods that particularly analyze the future potential and prospects of the country’s growth and the Central Asian region as a whole.
Digitalisation
Outreach
Research Training & International Programmes
Building research capacity through training, collaboration and knowledge exchange.
Research Training
In our informal “Blue Room” we held weekly Research Training Sessions throughout the 2018–19 academic year. Faculty members, students, and research assistants took part in 25 two-hour workshops where they first gained knowledge and then practised some of the key tasks of research. The training sessions started with the philosophy of research and then covered research design, posing questions, quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methods, and finally drawing conclusions and publishing results.
IFPRI Summer School
Together, IFPRI and WIUT organise the Regional Training Course on Applied Econometric Analysis for economists and researchers aged 35 or younger. The aim is to strengthen the capacity of young economists in Central Asia for quantitative research, economic policy analysis, and econometric analysis of economic and social policy issues.
UNESCO
The UNESCO–MOST School programme “Supporting Young Water Researchers” invited WIUT to conduct interactive workshops on academic writing and publishing research in international journals at the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization. This was an important step forward for many faculty members who had yet to publish in international journals. Dr. Pete Malvicini, CPRO Director, led this effort.
Conferences & International Events
Connecting researchers, institutions and international partners.
Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
In June of 2018 WIUT hosted IFPRI’s International Conference on Agricultural Transformation, Food Security and Nutrition in Central Asia featuring IFPRI’s 2018 Global Food Policy Report. The report considered the impacts of greater global integration—including the movement of goods, investment, people, and knowledge—and the threat of current antiglobalization pressures. Again, in May of 2019, WIUT and IFPRI with the Ministry of Agriculture sponsored another conference featuring IFPRI’s 2019 Global Food Policy Report. The publication highlighted the urgency of rural revitalization to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Internationalisation and Innovation in Higher Education
Education and research are twin priorities in Uzbekistan’s economic development—the role of universities is important to generate knowledge and build skills for people to flourish and create the nation’s future. In October of 2018, WIUT, in partnership with the University of Westminster (London), held a conference on the impact of the internationalization of higher education practice and policy. Participants discussed issues around innovation, partnerships, student mobility, and research with a global focus.
Pilot Agribusiness and Horticulture Training for Women of the Ferghana Valley
In December 2018, we partnered with the World Bank and its local training partner, Oasis, to culminate a week’s training for potential women borrowers. We designed an interactive workshop for women entrepreneurs led by our faculty expert, Nizomiddin Muradov. The focus was on vision formation, cooperation, and funding mechanisms to reach small and medium size orchards.
International Conference on Applied Linguistics and Language Education (ICALLE 2019)
In May 2019, WIUT designed and sponsored a conference bringing together teachers and researchers from Central Asia and other regions of the world to strengthen knowledge and practice in language education. Participants focused on how research and educational practice must adapt to rapid globalisation across sectors.
Capacity Development
Supporting researchers, developing talent and sharing expertise.
Research Assistantship Program
Since 2014, research assistants (RAs) have supported senior research faculty, contributing significantly to WIUT’s research. Most research assistants continue their postgraduate studies in European and North American universities.
Distinguished Speakers
In response Uzbekistan’s economic and social reforms, WIUT hosted various high-level speakers from international organizations during the 2018—19 academic year. Among them were Cyril Muller, World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia; Albert Jaeger, International Monetary Fund Mission; Wencai Zhang, Vice President of the Asian Development Bank; Shenggen Fan, Director General, International Food Research Policy Institute; Vladimir Norov, Secretary General, Shanghai Cooperation Organization; Helena Fraser, UN Resident Coordinator for Uzbekistan and others.
Research Seminars
Research Seminars are a place where faculty, research assistants, and students share completed research and work in progress. They receive valuable comments to help strengthen their research by preparing them for conference presentations and publication. On occasion, visiting researchers from outside the university share their work. Participants learn much from understanding how research questions are developed, a study is designed, and what the processes of collecting, analyzing, and presenting findings and conclusions look like in practice.
