Transnational scientific mobility. Perspectives from the North and the South

Negotiating International Research Collaborations in Tajikistan

“…This arises firstly from the legacy of Soviet intellectual isolation and then as a result of the subsequent domination of Western/Northern scholars on research about former Soviet states and the disempowerment of Tajikistani researchers to critically analyze the new globalized realities (Jonbekova, 2018; Niyozov & Dastambuev, 2012). These inherent inequalities and constraints on Tajikistani researchers should not be ignored, and many studies continue to use the North/South framing to highlight continuing challenges to international research such as “persistent geographical asymmetries” and “neo-colonial practices” (França & Padilla, 2017, p. 2). Neverthless, the aim in this study is to explore the dynamics of how Tajikistani researchers negotiate IRCs without bounding them in framings that “reinforce the unequal standings of marginalized populations, contribute to the intellectual dependency of non-Western scholars” (Silova et al, 2017, p. 80) and in so doing reproduce existing hierarchies of knowledge.…”