Aliya Kuzhabekova is Associate Professor at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan.

In this talk, Aliya Kuzhabekova will report on the results of a collaborative project exploring how individuals, who received Ph.D. degrees abroad transition to research environment in their home countries.

In particular, the aim of the comparative study was to develop a better understanding about how returnees, who obtained degrees in countries with high levels of research capacity re-integrated in the research environment of countries with lower levels of research capacities.

In addition, the project team tried to reveal the extent to which the returnees served as change agents transforming the research environment in their countries. The study allowed to obtain comparative insights about cross-country and program-related variations in the returnees’ adjustment experiences.