Mukhamejan Bazarov

Hi everyone! I’m Mukhamejan. I’m currently a master’s student majoring in International Relations as part of the Erasmus program IMCEERES. Since January 2022, I’ve been responsible for collecting and operationalizing data in Russian, Kazakh, and English. In July 2023, Jacob and I attended the annual research forum at Tsinghua University, where we presented our project, “Dispossessing Nazarbayev.” This work was later nominated as the best research paper.

I’m generally interested in informal networks and neopatrimonialism in politics. Specifically, I’m curious about calculating the capital of elite networks, as this provides an opportunity to predict how political and economic dynamics will behave in certain circumstances.

Aside from my interests in social science, I enjoy reading about philosophy and endocrinology.

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Alan Beket

Hi! I’m Alan, and I majored in Finance at Xiamen University in Malaysia. As a Research Assistant on our team, I focus on collecting and analyzing data on startup ecosystems in Central Asia.

Working with data has always been a passion of mine, and I find satisfaction in organizing complex information into comprehensive datasets. I have the pleasure of working closely with Dr. Reidhead, whose expertise and guidance have been crucial to improving my skills. Additionally, collaborating with Jacob has been a fantastic experience, and I’ve learned so much from him along the way.

I’m thrilled to be part of this project, which not only aligns with my professional interests but also offers me the opportunity to deepen my understanding of the dynamic startup ecosystems .

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Chia-Lin Kao

Chia-Lin KAO is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Her research interests include the political communication of authoritarian governments and diaspora politics, with a regional focus on China and post-Soviet regions.

She employs mixed quantitative and qualitative approaches, particularly text-as-data methods, to assess national narrative variations and their impacts in China and post-Soviet countries.

She completed her International Master’s in Central and Eastern European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies under the Erasmus Mundus program, with a thesis on the relationships between external crises and national narrative shifts, using the cases of the Great Patriotic War and the Sino-Japanese War.

In her free time, she enjoys learning new languages. She is fluent in Mandarin and English, proficient in Russian and French, and is currently learning Haitian Creole.

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