NURCE Paper on Disabled Entrepreneurs Wins Multiple Awards at ISBE Conference
This week, something extraordinary happened for our team at Nazarbayev University’s Research Centre for Entrepreneurship (NURCE), and it wasn’t about us.
Our paper on the well-being of disabled entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan was awarded Best Paper in the International Entrepreneurship Track, Best Overall Conference Paper, and Paper That Pushes the Boundaries of Research at the ISBE Conference in Glasgow.
But here’s the truth: we didn’t set out to win anything. We wrote this paper because we knew the people. We knew their names, their voices, their mornings. We knew what it means to wake up in chronic pain and still choose to show up—for work, for family, for life. We knew that their lives are not just "cases" in an ecosystem, but stories of dignity, struggle, care, and endurance.
We didn’t want to write yet another paper telling them how to “improve” themselves or how “ecosystems” could become more “inclusive.” We wanted to ask something deeper: What does well-being mean when your very existence is shaped by pain and exclusion, and yet you create, build, and persist?
The paper was never about solutions. It was about humanity.
And yesterday, when Rana Zayadin, PhD, walked up to the stage three times, we felt many things—pride, of course. But mostly humility. A deep, quiet humility that comes from knowing these awards aren’t ours. They belong to the people whose voices carried this work. We were just listeners.
This is also a message for every PhD student from the Global South, every early-career scholar who’s been told:
“Don’t study your own country, it’s not publishable data.”
“Your data lacks theoretical sophistication.”
“Use existing frameworks from the West; they’re more rigorous.”
No. The lives of people at the margins are not methodologically inferior. They’re methodologically urgent.
Critical theory. Storytelling. Grounded theory. These aren’t "soft." These are razor-sharp tools for cutting through the layers of marginalization that history has wrapped around so many lives.
To those still navigating this path: your stories matter. Your participants matter. You don’t have to mimic someone else’s theory. You can write your own—slowly, honestly, rooted in care.
We dedicate this paper to those whose daily courage quietly transforms the world. And we hope this win reminds us, always, to stay humble. Because if our research has any value at all, it’s only because someone trusted us with their truth.
Awards:
Best Paper in the International Entrepreneurship Track
Best Overall Conference Paper
Paper That Pushes the Boundaries of Research
Paper:Beyond Survival: Tracing the Processual Arc of Well-Being Among Disabled Entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan by Shumaila Yousafzai, Rana Zayadin, Mohammad Abdullah, Aigerim Tarbagataeva