Zhamilya Mukasheva is doing her PhD on the causes of retrenchment in higher education in the OECD countries. Her research focuses on the effect of blame avoiding behaviour of politicians on the subsequent retrenchment decisions. As such, her research interests include comparative politics of the welfare state, blame avoidance, and public opinion. She also researches on rentier states, civil wars, and politics of Central Asia. Prior to beginning her PhD, Zhamilya worked in a social and marketing research firm in Kazakhstan, where she was responsible for developing the design of social and marketing studies and collection of data. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the Kazakh-German University (Almaty, Kazakhstan) and Master’s degree from the Nazarbayev University (Astana, Kazakhstan).