Fariza Tolesh
Research

Education, language, digital publics, and social change.

My research combines quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, and computational approaches to examine institutional and societal change in Kazakhstan and Central Asia.

Research themes

Language, education & stratification

Language policy, multilingualism, educational pathways, linguistic capital, academic literacies, and institutional advantage.

Digital public discourse

Large-scale social media data, sentiment-oriented coding, public perceptions, geopolitical spillovers, identity, and socio-economic change.

Institutional research & analytics

Student success, programme evaluation, survey research, performance monitoring, forecasting, and evidence-informed decision support.

Political economy & labour markets

Education-to-work transitions, social mobility, migration, minority participation, and political economy analysis in Central Asia.

Research leadership

2025–2027
British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant — Co-investigator

Sentiments in Transition: Public Perceptions of Socio-Economic Change in Kazakhstan amid the Russia–Ukraine War.

2021–2024
PEER Network Political Economy of Education Research — Principal Investigator
2021–2022
Research in Big Data and Policy Analysis — Principal Investigator

Methods & tools

PythonRSPSSQualtricsNVivoMAXQDAForecastingARIMASurvey analysisMixed methodsDigital discourse analysis