Nygmet Ibadildin is an Assistant Professor at KIMEP University with a rich background in both academia and journalism. Before his academic career, he worked as editor-in-chief at Energy of Kazakhstan magazine and the newspaper Vremya Po. With a PhD from Finland's University of Tampere, his research examines how natural resources shape politics, how institutions develop after the Soviet collapse, and how post-Soviet states navigate their complex political landscapes.Dinara Pisareva is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Politics and International Relations at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. She completed her PhD at the Australian National University, focusing on protests and authoritarian politics in non-democracies. Her work explores how citizens in authoritarian states engage with politics, particularly during moments of change. Currently, she's researching how the Kazakh government framed the January 2022 events and how this affected public support for law enforcement. Dinara is also working on international projects studying trust in science and attitudes toward vaccination. Nurmakhan Tastaibek is completing his graduate studies in Political Science and International Relations at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan.Nurmakhan Tastaibek holds an MA in Political Science and International Relations from Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. His research interests include authoritarian governance, public opinion, and state-society relations in Central Asia. He is co-author of the book chapter “Foreign Terrorists and Kyrgyz Jazzmen: Framing the January 2022 Unrest in Kazakhstan,” which analyzes how Kazakhstani authorities framed the unrest through narratives of foreign interference. He is currently working on two projects: a survey experiment examining the effects of official narratives about the January 2022 events, and a qualitative study using constructivist grounded theory to explore attitudes toward LGBTQI+ individuals in Kazakhstan.