Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries

Group Submission Type: Book Launch

Description of Session

Global society has seen a proliferation of university-based research. This volume represents a collective contribution to the current debates on developing university research capacity. It considers this process in the specific context of post-Soviet countries, which share a common history. In the last thirty years, post-Soviet countries have chosen heterogeneous pathways of socio-economic and political development, which have been reflected in higher education transformations. Selected universities and governments started to recognize the importance of the research mission for the international legitimation of their universities and for building knowledge-based economies. Several of these countries managed to transform the institutional structures centered on the Soviet-style Academies of Science and started developing research capacity at universities. While each chapter adopts its own unique analytical angle, all country cases overview the institutional evolution of university research over the last 30 years to explore the extent to which universities have internalized their research mission and developed the capacity to carry out this mission.
The volume includes case studies covering thirteen former Soviet countries, as well as a chapter that overviews the Soviet model of managing university research on the eve of the breakout of the USSR. The case studies are organized by geographic area into three sections: Research Capacity in Eastern Europe (Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine) and Russia, Research Capacity in the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia), and Research Capacity in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan). During this book launch session presenters will offer an overview of the Soviet model of organizational separation of higher education and research and its transformation in the last three decades. Authors from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan will discuss findings from their respective country case studies.
Each chapter is authored by academics with expertise in the higher education of a given country. Authors are based at universities in former Soviet countries, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Case study contributors conducted interviews with higher education sector representatives (academics, administrators, and policy makers) and complemented the interview evidence with the analysis of policy documents to observe how policy agendas in the last three decades have evolved and influenced the development of research universities, and how local stakeholders used the Soviet legacies and imported new policy paradigms to achieve their objectives.
Each country case overviews the institutional evolution of university research ; the perspective of academics and university administrators; and the broader historical, social, political, and economic context in order to address the overreaching question: to what extent have universities in former Soviet countries internalized their research mission and developed the capacity to carry out this mission? The comparative nature of the book allows to draw important universal conclusions about logic, opportunities and barriers in building research capacity at universities.

Sub Unit

• Pre-Conference Workshops, Book launches, and Visual Art Exhibits / Book Launch

Chair

• Isak Frumin, Jacobs University Bremen/HSE

Co-author or Non-Presenter

• Maia Chankseliani, University of Oxford

Book Launch Presenters

• Abbas Abbasov, Columbia University Teachers College

• Aliya Kuzhabekova, University of Calgary

• Ketevan Chachkhiani, Arizona State University