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Abstract

This paper examines what happens when an applied qualitative researcher becomes embedded in a cross-border entrepreneurial venture: not as an outside observer, but as a co-producer whose expertise shapes the venture's design and commercial viability. The case concerns the alignment of three quite different collaborators who pitch a corporate social responsibility (CSR) project to a Kazakhstani bank: a Tashkent-based digital marketing agency, an Astana-based strategic business consultant, and a qualitative researcher (the author of the paper) whose (applied) research experience in Central Asia grounds the project's cultural sensitivity and evidence infrastructure.

Drawing on organizational autoethnography, the paper traces how this triangle of collaborators designs a "digital cultural heritage platform" for a Kazakhstani bank: an open-access online catalogue of Kazakhstani ornaments and traditional music available for unrestricted use. While this project can favorably position the bank as a "guardian of national heritage", it also raises contested questions about the provenance, authenticity, and presentation of cultural material artifacts and symbolic repertoires. Credible and careful academic involvement has proven essential for this project in two ways: 1) a feasibility study that involves art historians and other cultural specialists to safeguard against unreflected cultural appropriation; 2) a mixed-methods impact assessment that measures the project's societal effect and supports the bank in cultivating a "data-driven culture" to inform its future decision-making.

Situated at the nexus of Public Anthropology and business consultancy, I argue that this is a case illustrating the "positive dual use of knowledge". The insider-researcher who intimately participates in acts of creation, communication, and compromise across a constellation of diverse project stakeholders can utilize the collected evidence both to generate academic scholarship and to translate research findings into outputs of practical significance for non-academic counterparts. In that way, the case reflects on the potentials and pitfalls of how applied qualitative researchers can contribute to a university's "third mission" of societal engagement next to research and teaching.

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Abstract

Archaeology is inherently public. Public funds often pay for the research and provide employment opportunities for archaeologists. Local residents often see the work as it is happening. The materials uncovered during excavations belong to the nation and its citizens, which can be shared publicly in museums. The information learned belongs to the world and contributes to humanity’s collective knowledge and understanding of what life was like for people who came before. The public nature of archaeology inherently creates many stakeholders, each with specific questions or interests in the past and what it means for the present and future.

Archaeology is also a service. It is a discipline uniquely positioned to answer questions about the past while simultaneously considering the needs of different stakeholders. This paper examines how recent archaeological investigations on Soviet-era gulags located in Kazakhstan directly involve multiple stakeholders before, during, and after the research process. Knowing the questions and needs of local governments, students, and museums ensures that these stakeholders are actively considered throughout the project and has the additional benefit of making them feel more connected to the work itself. Fostering these connections also lay the foundation for building and strengthening heritage networks to protect and promote archaeological materials and knowledge locally and broadly.

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This paper examines what happens when qualitative and mixed-methods research must move beyond academic interpretation and become actionable in institutional practice. Drawing on an impact evaluation of the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Program in Kazakhstan, I argue that the practical value of applied research does not lie solely in the production of credible findings, but in the complex work of translating those findings across scales, audiences, and decision-making contexts. In this sense, applied research is not simply research conducted for a client or stakeholder; it is a distinct mode of inquiry in which methodological rigor, ethical responsibility, and communicative adaptability must be held together.

The paper centers on a multi-scalar evaluation design developed to assess the effects of the Fulbright ETA Program across interconnected levels of social life. Rather than limiting evaluation to participant satisfaction or short-term educational outcomes, the study examined impact at the level of individual students, faculty and staff, host institutions, and surrounding communities. This design made it possible to identify not only direct pedagogical effects—such as increased motivation to use English, greater intercultural openness, and changing perceptions of the United States—but also broader institutional and symbolic effects, including shifts in how host universities valued international collaboration, incorporated intercultural engagement, and understood the long-term significance of the program.

Conceptually, the paper advances an impact evaluation logic attentive to mediation, sustainability, and institutional uptake. It shows that program impact is neither linear nor self-evident; rather, it is filtered through organizational priorities, local meanings, and the uneven capacities of institutions to absorb and sustain change. In this respect, the evaluation moves beyond the question of whether the program “has worked” and instead asks how value was produced, recognized, translated, and retained after the ETA’s presence had ended.

The paper also reflects on the applied afterlife of research. Once findings are expected to inform practice, the researcher must rework qualitative complexity into usable forms without flattening nuance or losing ethical fidelity toward participants whose lives and institutions may be affected by evaluation-based decisions. By tracing this process, the paper contributes to debates on knowledge translation, the positive dual use of knowledge—advance academic understanding and produce practical value—, and the university’s third mission—of social engagement. More broadly, it argues that applied social research (in Kazakhstan) offers a powerful site for understanding how qualitative evidence can simultaneously advance scholarly debate and generate socially meaningful institutional action.

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Abstract

Green hydrogen is increasingly seen as a key solution for reducing carbon emissions, but whether it can actually be developed in countries that depend heavily on fossil fuels is still an open question. Most research focuses on the technical and economic side of hydrogen, while the social and institutional conditions that determine whether projects succeed or fail receive far less attention. This paper addresses that gap through an empirical study of prospective green hydrogen development in western Kazakhstan — a country where hydrogen ambitions sit alongside deep economic dependence on oil and coal, weak institutional trust, and serious water scarcity.

The study draws on 24 interviews with institutional stakeholders from government, the private sector, civil society, and academia, alongside 24 individual interviews and 8 focus group discussions with residents in Aktau and Atyrau. Data were analyzed using thematic coding and a structured comparison across groups and locations.

The findings show that both institutions and local communities share a strikingly similar set of concerns. Rather than institutions supporting hydrogen while communities resist it, both groups identify the same conditions that must be met before development can move forward: water use must be managed carefully and transparently; governance arrangements must be clear and credible; and the benefits of hydrogen must reach local people rather than flowing primarily to investors or the national elite. Fairness — over jobs, skills, water, and environmental protection — is not a secondary concern but a core condition for acceptance.

The study also finds evidence of what we call "trust fatigue": a cumulative skepticism built up through years of large projects that were announced with high expectations but delivered limited results. This shapes how both institutions and communities respond to new initiatives, regardless of their technical merit.

The paper argues that the main barriers to green hydrogen development in Kazakhstan are not technological but institutional. Legitimacy cannot be added later through better communication — it must be built into project design from the start. For fossil-dependent states pursuing hydrogen transitions, this means treating governance credibility, water protection, and fair benefit-sharing as entry conditions rather than optional features.

Keywords: green hydrogen, Kazakhstan, social acceptance, energy justice, governance, institutional trust, fossil-fuel dependence, energy transition