Dr. Alisher Abidjanov is a Head of Department of Educational Standards, Curricula and Textbooks at the Ministry of Public Education of Uzbekistan. Previously he served as a Deputy Director of the Republican Scientific-Practical Centre of Developing the Innovational Methods for Teaching Foreign Languages under the Uzbekistan State University of World Languages. Dr. Abidjanov’s research interests include theory of civil society, social changes in the transition period in Central Asia, and political culture and the democratization process. Throughout the 2002-2003 academic year and spring of 2004, he was a visiting Research Professor at George Washington University and in spring of 2005, he was a Visiting Scholar at Princeton University. From 2009 to 2010, Dr. Abidjanov was a Fulbright Scholar at Johns Hopkins University-SAIS in Washington, D.C., and during the 2011-2012 academic year, he taught at Constantine the Philosopher University in Slovakia. In 2013, he established a private educational center. Dr. Abidjanov holds a PhD, MA, and BA in Philosophy from the National University of Uzbekistan.