Exploring Academic Writing as Social Practice: Institutional Goals, Complexities and Possibilities in Central Asia

This book poses a provocative question: what happens when academic writing is imported not just as a skill set, but as an ideology, one that dictates whose knowledge counts, which languages belong, and how scholarly voice should sound? Focusing on English-medium instruction (EMI) universities in Central Asia, the book reimagines academic writing as a social practice rooted in power, identity, and institutional histories. Across chapters, contributors examine how students and educators negotiate imported norms, develop scholarly voice, and contest epistemic hierarchies through feedback, supervision, and writing groups. Rather than adopting global prescriptions, the book foregrounds local pedagogies, culturally embedded challenges, and creative responses to writing in EMI university contexts. As one of the first regionally grounded academic literacies volumes in Central Asia, this book offers essential insights for scholars of writing development, decolonial education, and the politics of knowledge production in global higher education reform.