Dauren has always been interested in studying sociological phenomena that might have an impact on politics since his studies at Nazarbayev University. One of his main research interests is about public self-immolations with the purpose of political protest. He recalls 2015, when a young man set himself on fire in Kazakhstan as a protest against the unlawful actions of the local policemen. Reflecting on this later, Dauren realized that despite that this incident gained a widespread attention in social media, this has not resulted in social movement or any further serious collective action, as it had been in the case of Mohamed Bouazizi, the man whose self-immolation was one of the major, if not the most significant, triggers of Arab Spring.
Researching on the details of other similar cases inspired Dauren to seek for the causes of why in some countries self-immolations are followed by the major political movements that achieve desirable political changes, while in others they are not. This motivates him to specialize in political communication at CEU and focus on this topic for his thesis next year, probing the traditional media coverage effect on public self-immolation, how it might contribute to social movements gaining momentum in their protests, and how such suicides can be prevented through other alternative means of political communication.
As he is still in his first year of the two-year MA Political Science program, he plans to take advantage of time, resources and the environment at CEU to investigate how governments should react to grievances of its citizens, or how some social movements aiming at a major political change might be initialized without such tragic outcome as a trigger.
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Dauren is one of the Political Science ambassadors at CEU. Prospective students can contact him at koptleuov_dauren@student.ceu.edu