Negotiating structure and agency: the readjustment of internationally educated scholars in Azerbaijan

This study explores readjustment experiences of Azerbaijani scholars returning home after doctoral study abroad. More specifically, it offers insights on how the returnees navigate structural challenges and exercise agency in the process of reintegration into the national academic system. Using a narrative inquiry approach combined with Giddens’ structuration theory, the study analyses data from ten interviews to gain insights into returnees’ professional adjustment, institutional engagement and knowledge production. The findings of the study reveal several systemic barriers, such as bureaucratic nostrification procedures, misalignment of employment opportunities with doctoral expertise, under-resourced research environments, and high teaching and administrative workloads. Returnees also face global knowledge hierarchies that marginalize Azerbaijani research. Despite these constraints, the participants of the study demonstrate agentic behaviours. They proactively maintain international collaborations, invest in mentoring talented students, initiate reforms and assume administrative roles to influence change. The study concludes that returnees act as both products and agents of structural transformation. It recommends nostrification policy reforms, provision of financial and managerial research support for returnees, and stimulating the establishment of alumni networks to enhance the returnees’ contributions to educational transformation and localized knowledge production.