I am a DPhil (PhD) student in Politics at the DPIR. My research focuses on politics in Kazakhstan and Central Asia.
My doctoral work considers the issue of subnational delegation. Who do national elites share power with? How do they judge their subordinates' abilities? My thesis, supervised by Katerina Tertytchnaya, approaches this question through studying variation in the tenure of akims (appointed governors and mayors) in Kazakhstan. I use computational techniques to create and code new, detailed, and large datasets on political elites' biographies and careers. I use this data to examine just how elites come to hold power, how they use it, and how their actions shape their political futures.
This work is (generously) funded by a four-year Economic and Social Research Council studentship awarded by the Grand Union Doctoral Training Programme. I am currently a research assistant on Dr Katerina Tertytchnaya's ESRC funded project on non-violent repression. Previously, I worked as a research assistant for the UKRI/Horizon Europe-funded AUTHLIB project, Professor Lenka Buštíková's work on illiberalism in Ukraine, and on the Oxford University Economic Recovery Project at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.
