Researcher of Digital Governance | PhD
Dr. Maxat Kassen is an Assistant Professor, Researcher of Digital Governance, PhD at Nazarbayev University (Kazakhstan). He is a former Fulbright Scholar in the University of Illinois at Chicago (USA) and fellow of the Annenberg Institute at the University of Oxford (UK). Over the last two decades, he lectured at a number of universities and research institutes, including as a visiting professor with guest lectures in the University of Illinois (USA), the University of Massachusetts (Amherst, USA), the University of Woodbury (Los Angeles, USA), the US National Center for Digital Government (Amherst, Massachusetts, USA) and other universities and research institutes.
Also before that, he had worked in the public sector. He is a former head of the foreign information service in the Kazakh National Information Agency (Kazinform). In partnership with CNN agency (Atlanta, USA), he organized the work of the international media and digital platform to cover the First Congress of the Leaders of the World Religions in Astana, Kazakhstan (September 23-24, 2003), which has later become universally famous as the largest regularly held inter-religious summit in the world.
In December 2017, Dr. Maxat Kassen was awarded with the Baitursynov Silver Medal for achievements in scientific research and excellence in teaching students (Association of Institutions of Higher Education, Almaty, Kazakhstan). In November 2018 he received the prestigious Scopus Award 2018 for Contribution to Science (Elsevier, The Netherlands) and in November 2020 he won another prestigious distinction: The Web of Science Award 2020: The Leader of Science in the category "Publication leader in social sciences" for his achievements in scientific research from such a global academic agency as Clarivate Analytics (Philadelphia, USA).
Dr. Maxat Kassen's research mostly focuses on digital government, data governance and public sector innovation. He is an author of more than 50 scientific publications in these areas, including 19 articles in international peer-reviewed journals with high impact factor and four books, titled “Understanding systems of e-government” (Rowman & Littlefield: New York, 2015), “E-government in Kazakhstan: a case study of multidimensional phenomena” (Routledge: London, 2016), "Open data politics" (Springer: Switzerland, 2019) and "Open data governance and its actors: theory and practice" (Palgrave Macmillan: London, 2022).