The Central Asia Program (CAP) at George Washington University promotes high-quality academic research on contemporary Central Asia, and serves as an interface for the policy, academic, diplomatic, and business communities.

The Central Asia Program focuses on the wider Central Asian space, which includes the five post-Soviet Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Xinjiang, Mongolia, as well as the Volga-Ural region, Kashmir, and Balochistan.

The program calls for a multidisciplinary approach combining the fields of political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, history, globalization studies, and security studies. It provides a platform for different, and even sometimes contradictory, points of view on contemporary Central Asia.