Aziz Berdiqulov attended the ICCEES XI World Congress in London in July 2025, thanks to the Young Researcher and Innovator Conference awarded by the PLURILINGMEDIA. He shared some of his impressions.
The International Council for Central and East European Studies (ICCEES) is one of the major platforms for researchers working on Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Baltic states to present their work. The ICCEES 2025 World Congress took place at University College London. Titled “Disruption”, the Congress aimed to address the changes and ruptures happening in the regions covered by the ICEESS and to facilitate knowledge exchange on how local and regional processes interact with global dynamics.
I presented two of my works. My first presentation, “A Minority Rights Approach to Digital Inclusion,” is a snapshot of the upcoming chapter co-written with Jennifer Jackson-Preece (LSE). We argue that digital inclusion for national minorities should become a basic right, and its guarantees should be incorporated into minority rights mechanisms. I also touched upon the fact that the digital realm can be an effective tool for minority languages’ revitalisation and preservation of linguistic diversity.
In my second presentation, “The Latinisation of the Kazakh Language: Analysis of the Russian Media Discourse”, I discussed how external narratives – in this case, Russian media discourse – shape the framing of the writing reform transition in Kazakhstan. As an evolution of this work, I am currently looking at specific discourse produced by Russian minorities’ media outlets in Kazakhstan. Interestingly, the Russian minority newspapers hold opposite sides, with some supporting the alphabet transition and others criticising it. I will present the results of this study at the 1st PLURILINGMEDIA General Conference: Media and Language Vitality in Warsaw.
Overall, the World Congress was an excellent event not only to present my work, but also to connect with people and network. I received lots of positive feedback, suggestions, and tips. I also managed to promote the work of PLURILINGMEDIA and encouraged Congress participants to join the Action. I have been convinced many times that human interaction is as important as scholarly exchange in academia, and I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the PLURILINGMEDIA’s team for allowing me to participate in the ICCEES 2025 World Congress.
