The Nazarbayev University Research Centre for Entrepreneurship (NURCE) has been shortlisted for the Times Higher Education Awards Asia in the category of Research Project of the Year (Social Sciences). This recognition places NURCE among the leading research institutions across Asia and marks a significant milestone for the Centre, which was established in 2022 at Nazarbayev University’s Graduate School of Business.
For the NURCE team, the news prompted not immediate celebration, but a moment of pause and reflection. Over the past several years, the Centre’s work has moved across many spaces — fieldwork in multiple countries, training programmes, research papers, books, and community engagements. Like many academic environments, the team often moved from one project to the next, focused on delivery, deadlines, and outputs. The shortlisting offered an opportunity to step back and ask: what has this work really been doing? How has it evolved? Why does it matter? And who is it for?
The research project that earned this recognition does not fit neatly into a single category. It cannot be explained solely through publications, outputs, or metrics. Rather, it unfolded across countries, conversations, and incremental decisions that gradually reshaped the team’s understanding of what research can become.
The project’s origins do not begin in a university setting. They begin at a high-altitude lake in Kyrgyzstan in 2022, during fieldwork on community-based tourism, when the research team visited a yurt camp and encountered Rahima — an entrepreneur who had built her business not through access to capital or institutional support, but through endurance, community solidarity, and sheer persistence. That encounter, and many that followed across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and beyond, prompted a fundamental rethinking of how research is conducted, what it produces, and who it serves.
Out of this reflection emerged a series of interconnected initiatives: narrative publications that preserved individual voices and were returned to the communities where research was conducted; book launches that became community gatherings; training programmes grounded in Kazakh philosophical tradition; and exhibitions that allowed participants to present their own stories locally. Each of these initiatives extended the reach of rigorous academic scholarship without replacing it.
Director of NURCE and Professor of Entrepreneurship, Dr. Shumaila Yousafzai, wrote in this month’s editorial: “What emerged was not something we had planned at the outset. It was a cycle. Listening led to research. Research led to reflection. Reflection led to engagement. Engagement led back to listening. Within this cycle, academic rigour was not compromised. If anything, it became more demanding. But it was no longer isolated. It moved alongside impact, alongside relationships, alongside responsibility.”
For NURCE, being shortlisted is already meaningful — not only as recognition of what has been done, but as an invitation to continue the work with greater clarity and responsibility.
For the NURCE team, the news prompted not immediate celebration, but a moment of pause and reflection. Over the past several years, the Centre’s work has moved across many spaces — fieldwork in multiple countries, training programmes, research papers, books, and community engagements. Like many academic environments, the team often moved from one project to the next, focused on delivery, deadlines, and outputs. The shortlisting offered an opportunity to step back and ask: what has this work really been doing? How has it evolved? Why does it matter? And who is it for?
The research project that earned this recognition does not fit neatly into a single category. It cannot be explained solely through publications, outputs, or metrics. Rather, it unfolded across countries, conversations, and incremental decisions that gradually reshaped the team’s understanding of what research can become.
The project’s origins do not begin in a university setting. They begin at a high-altitude lake in Kyrgyzstan in 2022, during fieldwork on community-based tourism, when the research team visited a yurt camp and encountered Rahima — an entrepreneur who had built her business not through access to capital or institutional support, but through endurance, community solidarity, and sheer persistence. That encounter, and many that followed across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and beyond, prompted a fundamental rethinking of how research is conducted, what it produces, and who it serves.
Out of this reflection emerged a series of interconnected initiatives: narrative publications that preserved individual voices and were returned to the communities where research was conducted; book launches that became community gatherings; training programmes grounded in Kazakh philosophical tradition; and exhibitions that allowed participants to present their own stories locally. Each of these initiatives extended the reach of rigorous academic scholarship without replacing it.
Director of NURCE and Professor of Entrepreneurship, Dr. Shumaila Yousafzai, wrote in this month’s editorial: “What emerged was not something we had planned at the outset. It was a cycle. Listening led to research. Research led to reflection. Reflection led to engagement. Engagement led back to listening. Within this cycle, academic rigour was not compromised. If anything, it became more demanding. But it was no longer isolated. It moved alongside impact, alongside relationships, alongside responsibility.”
For NURCE, being shortlisted is already meaningful — not only as recognition of what has been done, but as an invitation to continue the work with greater clarity and responsibility.
