Rethinking Gender, Labour, and Belonging: First GWO Conference in Central Asia
In November 2025, Nazarbayev University hosted an international gathering of nearly 100 scholars for the Gender, Work & Organization (GWO) Conference — marking the first time the event was held in Central Asia.
Under the theme "Voices at the Margins: Rethinking Gender, Labour, and Belonging," the conference created space for feminist, decolonial, and intersectional scholarship rooted in lived experience and place.
Across three days, participants examined how gendered labour, migration, ecology, and power intersect under conditions of precarity and historical inequality. Panels, workshops, and informal conversations foregrounded perspectives often sidelined in global academic debates, while welcoming early-career researchers and doctoral students into a shared scholarly community.
"Telling their (Jua Kali) stories — the pain, the struggle, the resilience, the joys — is how I contribute to making visible what entrepreneurship on the margins truly looks like." — Tabitha Sindani, PhD, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, Participant of GWO Conference
Building on this momentum, GWO 2026 will be held in June in Astana, expanding the space for critical engagement, creative methods, and voices that insist on being heard.
📅 GWO 2026: 8–10 June 2026, Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan Abstract submission deadline: 1 March 2026
