SUSADICA symposium on Central Asia’s sustainable agricultural development
08 November 2023
On 12-14 October 2023, project partners from Germany and Uzbekistan gathered for a final academic symposium of the Structured doctoral programme on Sustainable Agricultural Development in Central Asia (SUSADICA) in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
The symposium brought together doctoral and senior research of the SUSADICA structured doctoral programme to present and discuss the final results of their studies, as well as representatives from TIIAME, national and international research institutes and development agencies. The event was organized to officially complete the piloting phase of the structured doctoral programme which started in 2018 and is ending in 2023 through funding by the VolkswagenStiftung and the Ministry of Innovative Development of Uzbekistan. The SUSADICA programme has been established in the TIIAME NRU and maintained jointly by Justus Liebig University Gießen, IAMO, and Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.
The symposium comprised presentations by the programme’s doctoral students who are completing their dissertation at faculties of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Justus Liebig University Gießen, and Humboldt University of Berlin. The presentations emphasized the need for high-quality data access at various scales, starting from individual and farm levels up to remotely collected meso level datasets to conduct research and contribute to informed discussions on regional development.
Within the two days, panel sessions on educational and agricultural reforms focused on the current changes in Central Asia, in particular in Uzbekistan. SUSADICA project leader Martin Petrick and Nozilakhon Mukhamedova, the programme coordinator from Justus Liebig University Gießen, provided an overview of activities of the SUSADICA programme over its five years. Nodir Djanibekov suggested how the findings of SUSADICA researchers can serve as guides for informed policymaking. The two keynotes of the symposium Tommaso Trevisani and Iroda Amirova emphasized the importance of the social sciences in addressing agricultural development issues by informing institutional and policy changes, and contributing to public discourse.