Ms. Aizhan Shomotova

Aizhan Shomotova is a Ph.D. candidate in Leadership and Policy Studies in Education at the College of Education (CEDU), United Arab Emirates University. She received a graduate fellowship to pursue her PhD. Aizhan completed her 2-year master’s degree in corporate management at Tongji University, Shanghai, China, funded by an International Chinese Government Scholarship. Aizhan has more than ten years of international experience in higher education, including teaching, research, academic and career advising, and management. She currently works as a faculty instructor at the College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Zayed University.

She was a Visiting Ph.D. Doctoral Scholar at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, in Fall 2022. She served as an assistant editor of the International Journal of Research in Education (IJRE) and a well-being officer at the Emirates Center for Happiness Research, UAEU.

She was a committee member and reviewer in SIG 168: Graduate and Postdoctoral Education Across Disciplines, American Education Research Association (AERA), Labor Studies Division - Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), and Education and Digital Sociology Committee, International Sociological Association (ISA), and World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR). Aizhan has presented at national and international conferences and published her work internationally in peer-reviewed SCOPUS- indexed journals and books.

She is currently involved in various research projects. Her research interests focus on interdisciplinary studies, higher education, youth employability and employment, labor studies, leadership development, student learning and engagement, career and skills development, gender studies, graduate studies, well-being and happiness, media, digitalization, digital capital, the Middle East countries (MENA) and the Post-Soviet countries.