Call for Applications

 USTA Mentorship Programme 2025-26

We are happy to announce a new round of the USTA Mentorship Program, running from November 2025 to December 2026. Building on the success of previous cohorts, this round introduces a new format: mentees will work around a shared theme that will bring their research into conversation with one another. The aim is not only to strengthen individual projects, but also to develop a collective publication in the form of a special issue.

For this round, we invite scholars whose work engages with everyday and lived economies — the ordinary yet complex ways in which people navigate economic life outside of formal markets and top-down policies. These economies are embedded in social institutions like culture, politics, law, and religion, showing how economic and social life are inseparable. Focusing on lived experiences highlights how people negotiate, adapt to, and sometimes contest broad reforms, state agendas, and development initiatives in their daily practices of survival, exchange, and accumulation across Central Asia. At the same time, everyday and lived economies are not only sites of adaptation but also spaces of creativity, where communities build alternative forms of value and economic life. We particularly encourage research that develops local epistemologies, such as practices of reciprocity, moral economies of obligation and fairness, and ways of understanding economic life as embedded in place and history.

To qualify, the applicants should: 

• Be scholars at any stage of their career (minimum MA degree, priority will be given to PhD/Candidate of Science holders)

• Have a research focus in Social Sciences, with a thematic focus on everyday, lived economies in Central Asia

• Submit an abstract AND a draft of the potential article (2500–3000 words)

• Show readiness to work in partnership with mentors (meeting every other month for the span of ONE year)

• Be ready to take part in online masterclasses on writing skills and publication strategies

• Take part in academic writing groups

• Be fluent in English enough to write academic papers

• Be originally from the Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan)

To apply, please fill out this form by October 10, 2025. Selection will be made by October 30, 2025. 

What to expect: 

Selected mentees will be notified by the organizing committee at the beginning of November2025. The mentorship program will run from November 2025 - December, 2026. Upon completion of the program, you are expected to submit a fully developed academic article. The paired mentor and mentee will discuss the draft.  The mentees are required to attend several masterclasses on improving writing skills and publishing portfolios as well as demonstrate consistent writing progress. 

Outcomes: 

- At least 1 academic and/or analytical publication 

- Expanded network with Central Asian and international scholars 

- Practical skills on building an international academic career 

Please email to mentoring.kurultai@gmail.com with any questions. 

Organising committee:  Dr Gulzat Botoeva, Dr Assel Tutumlu,  Ms Hikoyat  Salimova and Dr Olga Khan