From Gulags to the Gulf: One Georgetown Student’s Mission to Research What Others Overlook
Photos of prisoners including women and children. Photo Credit: Alzhir Museum/ Photo credit: Aibarshyn Akhmetkali/The Astana Times
In the quiet halls of the ALZHIR Memorial in Kazakhstan, Raikhan Primbetova sifted through fragile documents—lists of names, faded letters, records written in trembling hands, traces of the nearly 18,000 women and their children who passed through the forced labor camp from 1937 to 1950. Each file carried the weight of a silenced story: women imprisoned not for their actions, but for their associations, condemned under Stalin’s rule as “wives of traitors.”
For Raikhan, the experience of conducting research funded through Georgetown’s Gender+ Justice Initiative was a life-changing step toward a career with impact, a chance to practice harnessing data to tell little-known stories that inspire change.
A third-year International Economics student at Georgetown University in Qatar, Raikhan is approaching her studies with a deep sense of social responsibility. “My degree has allowed me to integrate the study of finance, sustainability, and gender justice to analyze how economic systems can promote equitable and sustainable development,” she says.
In September, Raikhan presented her paper, “State Power, Gendered Repression, and Labor Exploitation: A Feminist Political Economy of the ALZHIR Camp,” at the 3rd World Conference on Gender and Women’s Studies at St. Mary‘s University, London, UK.
“Writing and presenting the paper became an act of witnessing,” she said, “a way to honor those silenced voices.”
The research was also published in the conference’s Abstract Book—marking her first Google Scholar–indexed publication.
Her drive to research the intersection of political economy, gender, and sustainability extends to data-driven analysis that informs policy and practice. Through a competitive Georgetown Center for Research and Fellowships grant, she spent the other half of her summer analyzing the impact of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors on firm performance in the S&P 500.
Visiting The Bloomberg Terminal, New York City, which provides ESG data for S&P 500 American companies
Raikhan during the Greece Summer Symposium 2025
Presenting satellite data research on climate change during the Greece Summer Symposium 2025
She also spent two weeks in Greece taking a summer course on Sensing Marine Ecosystem Health and Climate Impacts from Space. “It broadened my perspective on global environmental systems while reinforcing how data-driven analysis can inform policy, economic modeling, and questions of sustainability and justice across disciplines.”
Beyond the classroom, Raikhan shares her enthusiasm for data that does good as President of Georgetown’s Data Analytics Club, leading initiatives in applied data science for economics and policy, with an eye toward advancing equity and justice. Through every project, Raikhan exemplifies Georgetown’s mission to cultivate scholars who listen closely—to data, to history, and to voices the world too often overlooks.