Higher education (HE) systems globally are undergoing rapid transformation driven by globalisation, marketisation, digitalisation, and increasing demands for accountability and quality assurance (Marginson, 2022). These interconnected processes have reshaped institutional priorities and governance arrangements, while simultaneously altering expectations of academic work and authority. Within these conditions, academic leadership has become central to how universities respond to reform, manage uncertainty, and sustain trust among academic communities and wider society (Macfarlane, 2011; Macfarlane et al., 2024; Watermeyer et al., 2025).
International scholarship continues to be dominated by studies conducted in Western and Anglophone higher education systems, often assuming the transferability of leadership models and practices across settings. As a result, leadership experiences in post-Soviet higher education systems remain significantly under-represented, limiting understanding of how leadership is shaped by different historical trajectories, governance traditions, and institutional cultures (Azimbayeva, 2017; OECD, 2017).
This study examines the leadership practices and lived experiences of academic middle managers - specifically, deans, deputy deans, and department heads in Kazakhstani universities. Situated between executive priorities, departmental realities, middle managers frequently translate competing demands into workable local practices, yet their day-to-day leadership remains less visible in the literature. Existing research suggests that middle managers play a crucial role in shaping how institutional reforms are interpreted and implemented at the local level, often engaging in complex processes of negotiation, identity work, and sense-making (Floyd, 2012, 2016; Bolden et al., 2025). However, their everyday leadership experiences remain insufficiently explored, particularly in non-Western contexts.
Kazakhstan provides a distinctive and valuable context for examining these issues. Since gaining independence in 1991, the country has implemented extensive reforms in HE, aimed at aligning its system with international standards. These reforms include joining the Bologna Process, the evolution of quality assurance mechanisms, and new governance arrangements (Ahn et al., 2018; OECD, 2017). While such reforms have been widely analysed at policy and system levels, considerably less is known about how academic leaders experience and navigate these changes in their daily work. This gap is especially significant in a post-Soviet and multilingual context marked by historical legacies, linguistic hierarchies, and institutional path dependencies (Mukhatayev et al., 2024).

The research project addresses three interrelated research questions: (1) how academic middle managers in Kazakhstani universities construct and make sense of their cultural identities within a post-Soviet, multilingual higher education context; (2) in what ways these cultural identities inform, shape, or constrain their leadership practices; (3) how academic middle managers interpret and mediate leadership challenges associated with ongoing higher education reforms in Kazakhstan. Research questions aim to generate a contextualised understanding of academic leadership that foregrounds identity, power, and lived experience.
The study is theoretically grounded in cultural identity theory, which conceptualises identity as dynamic, socially constructed, and shaped by historical, linguistic, and institutional contexts rather than as a fixed attribute (Hall, 2015). In the multilingual and post-Soviet context of Kazakhstan, cultural identity is particularly salient in shaping how leadership is understood, and enacted. Attention to language use, professional positioning, and identity narratives enables deeper insight into how academic leaders make sense of authority, responsibility, and belonging in everyday practice (van Winkel et al., 2018).

The analysis is further informed by Critical Leadership Studies, which challenge individualised accounts of leadership by foregrounding issues of power, voice, inequality, and context (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012; Watermeyer et al., 2022). Thus, leadership is examined as a socially and politically situated phenomenon shaped by institutional structures, reform discourses, and uneven power relations within HE. Bolden’s multi-level model of leadership practice is employed as an analytical lens, enabling examination of leadership experiences at personal, relational, structural, contextual, and developmental levels (Bolden et al., 2008).

This doctoral research project employs a qualitative, interpretivist research design to examine how academic middle managers understand, experience, and enact educational leadership within the cultural, linguistic, and institutional context of higher education in Kazakhstan. An interpretivist qualitative approach is well suited to the study’s emphasis on participants’ subjective interpretations of leadership, identity, and professional practice, rather than on evaluating leadership effectiveness or testing predefined leadership frameworks (Creswell & Poth, 2018). Empirical data will be generated primarily through semi-structured, individual interviews with approximately 20–25 academic middle managers, including deans, deputy deans, and heads of department. Participants will be recruited from two higher education institutions representing different organisational types within the Kazakhstani university system: national and state. This sampling strategy is intended to capture variation in institutional missions, governance arrangements, and reform trajectories, thereby enabling insight into leadership experiences across diverse higher education settings. Each participant will be invited to take part in a single interview lasting approximately 60–90 minutes. Interviews will be conducted either face-to-face or online, depending on participants’ preferences and institutional access considerations. To facilitate culturally grounded and authentic accounts, participants will be given the option to conduct the interview in Kazakh, Russian, or English. With informed consent, interviews will be audio-recorded and transcribed in full. During transcription, identifying information will be removed, and pseudonyms will be assigned to ensure participants’ confidentiality. Additionally, the study will draw on a limited selection of publicly available institutional documents, including university mission statements, strategic plans, and national higher education policy documents accessed through official university and government websites. These materials will be used solely to provide contextual background and will not constitute a primary dataset for analysis. Data analysis will be conducted using reflective thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2023). This method aligns with the study’s interpretivist orientation by treating meaning as actively produced through engagement between the researcher, the data, and the research context, rather than as something that passively emerges from the data. The analytical process will combine inductive attention to participants’ accounts with theoretically informed interpretation. In line with the principles of reflective thematic analysis, reflexive attention will be paid throughout the analytic process to the researcher’s interpretive role in theme development (Braun & Clarke, 2021). Bolden’s multi-level model of leadership practice will be deployed as an analytical lens to support systematic examination of leadership experiences across personal, relational, structural, contextual, and developmental dimensions (Bolden et al., 2008).

This project is expected to generate empirically grounded insights into how academic middle managers in Kazakhstani universities understand and enact educational leadership within a post-Soviet, multilingual, and reform-intensive higher education context. By foregrounding the lived experiences of deans, deputy deans, and heads of department, the research conceptualises leadership as a socially embedded and identity-mediated practice rather than a set of transferable managerial skills. Empirically, the findings are anticipated to show that academic middle managers operate within conditions characterised by ongoing negotiation between institutional reform agendas, professional values, and personal identity positions. Leadership practices are likely to involve mediating policy demands and accountability requirements while sustaining collegial relationships and navigating limited organisational resources. Middle managers are therefore expected to emerge as key actors in translating reform discourses into everyday academic practices. The study is also expected to demonstrate that cultural identity plays a significant role in shaping leadership legitimacy and authority within Kazakhstani universities. Language use, professional positioning, and historically informed understandings of hierarchy are likely to influence how leadership is enacted and recognised in daily institutional life. These dynamics are particularly salient in a multilingual post-Soviet context, where leadership authority extends beyond formal roles and is negotiated through culturally situated practices. Conceptually, the study contributes to international debates on academic leadership by extending cultural identity theory and Critical Leadership Studies into a post-Soviet higher education context that remains under-represented in existing scholarship. By highlighting the role of power relations, linguistic hierarchies, and institutional legacies, the study challenges universalistic leadership models that overlook contextual complexity. By offering empirically grounded insights from a post-Soviet context, this study aims to contribute to international debates on academic leadership and demonstrates how leadership knowledge is produced through contextually situated experiences.

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