Nazarbayev University Repository (NUR) is an institutional electronic archive designed for the long-term preservation, aggregation, and dissemination of scientific research outcomes and intellectual property produced by the Nazarbayev University community and affiliated organizations.

Communities in DSpace

Select a community to browse its collections.

Recent Submissions

  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type:Item, Access status: Open Access ,
    Female Virtue, Religion and State Ideology in Tajikistan
    (Central Asia Program, 2016-01-10) Thibault, Helene
    Since independence in 1991, Tajikistan’s authorities have been trying to promote a unifying ideology that could inspire the whole nation. National unity is particularly challenging in this country that has been wounded by a five-year civil war (1992-1997). As religiosity has become more prevalent over the years, the authorities have tried to thwart the growth of Islam by promoting a conservative ideology devoid of Islamic content, resting on imagined national traditions, national purity and ancient wisdom. Interestingly, the female figure has become increasingly instrumental in the state’s national discourse. Patronizing moral recommendations focus mainly on female clothing and virtue, which have come to embody national values. The role of women in the transmission of family and patriotic values is celebrated, yet discourses hide a difficult reality for Tajik women who are deeply affected by poverty, labor migration, and social and state pressure.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type:Item, Access status: Open Access ,
    The Many Faces of Polygyny in Kazakhstan
    (Central Asia Program, 2021-04-16) Thibault, Helene
    As a soft authoritarian state whose society is considered relatively socially conservative, Kazakhstan’s regulation of sexual practices and marriage blends liberal lifestyles with patriarchal outlooks. The issue of polygyny has been well researched in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, often in light of women’s economic vulnerability, the re-traditionalization of gender roles, and increasing religiosity. In contrast, this paper highlights the cosmopolitan, sometimes glamourous, character of polygyny in oil-rich Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan, many associate polygyny with women’s economic vulnerability and opportunism, others with the country’s perceived demographic problems, and still others with religious traditions and patriarchal oppression. However, interviews and focus groups I conducted in 2019-2020 reveal that becoming a second wife (locally referred to as tokal) represents a way for some women to retain independence in their relationships.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type:Item, Access status: Open Access ,
    Au Kazakhstan, le débat brûlant sur le mariage polygame
    (The Conversation UK, 2026-01-26) Thibault, Helene
    Au Kazakhstan, les propositions de légaliser la polygynie font régulièrement surface, y compris en novembre dernier, portées par des élus qui souhaitent donner un statut civil aux familles déjà engagées dans ces unions. Mais, chaque fois, elles rallument la controverse : pour leurs opposants, ce serait un glissement dangereux pour la laïcité de l’État et un net recul pour les droits des femmes.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type:Item, Access status: Open Access ,
    Tolstoy’s laboratory of marriage: from family happiness to Anna Karenina
    (Nazarbayev University School of Sciences and Humanities, 2026-05-13) Yerezhepova, Laura; Murphy, Amanda
    This thesis examines how, in "Family Happiness" and "Anna Karenina," Leo Tolstoy represents the experience of living within marriage across time. Rather than treating marriage as a stable institution or narrative resolution, Tolstoy portrays it as a condition in which emotional life is reshaped through domestic routine, social life, and continuous interaction between spouses. The thesis argues that marital instability in these texts emerges not simply from external social conditions but from the gradual mismatch between imagined love and the realities of shared domestic life, particularly when romantic idealization is subjected to duration, reflection, and routine. Introducing the concept of Tolstoy’s “laboratory of marriage,” the thesis defines marriage as a narrative environment in which relationships are tested under changing conditions and shifting perspectives. The thesis traces the development of this experimental method from the single retrospective consciousness of Masha in "Family Happiness" to the comparative and multi-perspectival structure of "Anna Karenina." In the latter, Tolstoy expands this narrative method through four major marriages, namely those of Stiva and Dolly, Anna and Karenin, Anna and Vronsky, and Levin and Kitty, each revealing a different attempt to reconcile desire, domesticity, and morality. Through shifting focalization and refracted perspectives, marriage is differently imagined, experienced, justified, and judged by multiple consciousnesses occupying conflicting moral and psychological positions. Drawing on narrative theory, feminist criticism, and scholarship on Tolstoyan temporality, the thesis argues that narration itself becomes central to the representation of marital instability. Together, the texts trace the movement from imagined love to lived marriage and from emotional idealization to accommodation, imbalance, endurance, or collapse, revealing how emotional life in Tolstoy’s fiction is never immediate or transparent but mediated through memory, interpretation, perspective, and social observation.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type:Item, Access status: Open Access ,
    Adenosine modulates L-DOPA level during physical activity though NR4A2 (Nurr-1) – TYROSINE HYDROXYLASE–L-DOPA pathway
    (Nazarbayev University School of Medicine, 2026-04) Zhubashev, Olzhas; Ali, Syed; Abidi, Syed Hani Hassan
    Previously our research team found nine genes (ATF3, NR4A2, NFIL3, NR4A3, MAFF, SIK, SLC2A3, MYC, and SOCS3) that are differentially expressed in sedentary and physically active people. Another study of our team showed an affinity level of gut derived metabolites that interacted with these nine proteins. One of the strongest binding activities was observed between adenosine and NR4A2. NR4A2 is a nuclear orphan factor responsible for adaptation to physical activity and neuronal signaling. As a step towards understanding the mechanism of gut derived metabolites affecting mental function such as motivation to physical activity through gene modulation, this study was performed. To investigate the regulation of L-DOPA level through the NR4A2-TH-L-DOPA pathway through Adenosine, the qPCR analysis and Western blot analysis were used. Rhabdomyosarcoma (RD CCL-136) cells were used as a platform for gene expression analysis. The results showed the ability of adenosine to initiate expression of NR4A2. Further investigation of the proposed mechanism should be performed to clarify expression of NR4A2 in a time and dose dependent manner. The study will elucidate a broader understanding of gut-derived adenosine’s effect on NR4A2-TH-L-DOPA pathway and the potential mechanism of motivation it regulates.