The goal of this panel is to review a number of social and health care challenges and analyze the effectiveness of the post-Soviet governments in tackling these problems. The participants will also discuss the role of non-state actors in providing the population with necessary social welfare services. “I am very excited about NU hosting ESCAS 2013,” says Daniel Pugh, Assistant Professor and Vice-dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at NU. “This event brings together the best scholars of the region from around the globe. It is a rare pleasure to find so many experts on a single region sharing ideas in one place and I look forward to hours of lively discussion. The NU community will benefit greatly from hosting this event and it demonstrates that we are quickly becoming a central hub for research on Central Asia.” The program of the panel includes 3 themes: “Social Work of Boundaries in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan” – Sofia An, University of Toronto, “Regional Development, Social Inequality and Labour Disputes in Kazakhstan: Two Years after Zhanaozen” – Elena Maltseva, NU, “Effects of Labour Migration: A Case for Reform of the Tajik Family Law to Protect Women” – Dilbar Turakhanova, independent scholar. The first conference of The European Society for Central Asian Studies took place in 1987 in London, UK and was convened by the School of Oriental and African Studies. Since then, the event has been held in 11 countries around the world with a frequency of once in two years. The ESCAS conference in Astana, the first ever in Central Asia, will be namely at NU. The previous conference took place in 2011 in the UK at the University of Cambridge.
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