Summer School on Social Cohesion in Kyrgyzstan

SIPRI and the University of Central Asia (UCA) are pleased to invite applicants to a summer school on social cohesion in Kyrgyzstan. Read the announcement in Russian (pdf).

Social cohesion has emerged over the last two decades as an important concept in both academic and political discourse. Quality of connections and cooperation between people and groups is essential to stability and development. Social cohesion—convergence across groups in society—provides a structure that helps ensure greater degrees of predictability and certainty in inter- and intra-group relations. While there is no guarantee that all groups within a society will agree on all issues, convergence across groups offers an incentive for groups to coexist as a peaceful society.

The summer school ‘Social Cohesion: Concept, Implementation and Impact Evaluation’ is a capacity-building activity for researchers, practitioners and policymakers in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia. It is organized as part of the ‘Social Cohesion through Community-based Development’ project implemented in Kyrgyzstan from 2014 to 2017 and funded by the World Bank and the Aga Khan Foundation. The project aims to identify, pilot and build capacity for social cohesion mechanisms in community-driven development approaches.

The summer school will be held on 11–18 June 2017 and will cover the following topics:

• Concept of social cohesion;
• Measurement of social cohesion using micro-data from Kyrgyzstan;
• Application of social cohesion as a development intervention outcome, such as in impact evaluation studies; and
• Processing and analyzing micro-data using the statistical package Stata.

Key instructors and speakers include Professor Kathryn Anderson (Vanderbilt University), Dr Damir Esenaliev (SIPRI), Dr Mandi M. Larsen (Jacobs University Bremen) and Dr Kanat Tilekeyev (UCA).

Format

The summer school will take place from 11 to 18 June 2017. The languages of instruction will be Russian and English. Simultaneous translation will be provided. Sessions will include lectures, class discussions, group work, case study exercises and statistical analysis.

Upon successful completion of the summer school, participants will receive a certificate of attendance.

Requirements for applicants

• A Bachelor or Master degree in social sciences;
• Knowledge of basic statistics (both the online selection component and the summer school will include statistics exercises); and
• Working knowledge of English is desirable (participants are expected to work with Stata software and read literature in English).

Researchers, primarily young professors, PhD students, development practitioners, and policy analysts from government, international agencies and civil society organizations based in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) are encouraged to apply.

Cost

Participation is free of charge for up to 20 successful applicants and will cover tuition, regional travel expenses based on reasonable and average air and bus ticket prices, return travel from Bishkek to Issyk-Kul, accommodation and food. Additional spaces are available for self-funded participants.

Participants are required to bring their own laptops to the summer school, with MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint software installed. The Stata statistical package will be provided by the summer school organizers.

Application submission

Applicants should submit, in English or Russian:

• A CV; and
• A two-page motivation essay highlighting the relevance and potential benefit of the summer school’s topic to applicant’s work, research or studies. The essay should also describe the applicant’s experience with quantitative research methods and statistical analysis.

These should be submitted via email to [email protected] with ‘Summer School Application’ in the subject line.

The application deadline is 5 April 2017. Shortlisted applicants will be contacted by 10 April 2017.

Official Link: https://www.sipri.org/news/2017/call-applications-summer-school-social-cohesion