RESEARCH BOARD

Prof. Nilufer Narli, Chair
Department of Sociology
Bahçeşehir University
Istanbul, Turkey
E-mail: nilufer.narli@eas.bahcesehir.edu.tr

Chairperson of the Sociology Department and Founding Director at The Center for Health, Society and Prevention Studies (CHSPS) at Bahçeşehir University, Prof. Dr. Nilufer Narli holds a PhD in Social Sciences with a major in Political Sociology from the School of Comparative Social Sciences, University Sains Malaysia. She has a strong experience in founding institutions and she has held high level executive positions. Narli founded the Sociology Department at Bahçeşehir in 2005. She served as Vice Rector of Bahçeşehir University (2005-2006). Prior to being appointed as Vice Rector in September, 2005, she had been the founding Dean of the Faculty of Communication at Kadir Has University (October 2003-August 2005). Prior to that, she was the founder and head of the Department of Sociology at Marmara University (December 1999 – September 2003), where she also chaired the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Institute of Middle East Studies. She also taught in the Institute of Women’s Studies at Istanbul University (1995-1999).

Her interest in research and teaching include the followings: Islamist movements in the Middle East and Southeast Asia; irregular migration in the Balkans; Syrian crisis and gender; military and good governance in Turkey; and political memory and coup memory in Turkey and Latin America. She has leading role in the organization of international conferences on regional cooperation in the Middle East. Prof. Narli was granted Eisenhower Fellowship in 1993. Prof. Narli has undertaken several research projects, among them the most recent one is a TUBITAK sponsored project titled, “Political Memory in Turkey” (2013-2015). Currently, Narli is conducting a research project on Syrian crisis, gender and health that focuses on displaced Syrian women and children in Turkey. In the field of security studies, Narli has undertaken several research projects, including “Governance and the Military: Perspectives for Change in Turkey” (2004-2006). The project was coordinated and funded by the Centre for European Security Studies (CESS) in the Netherlands. She has also participated in several conferences on European security and civil-military relations in comparative perspective. She has taken a leading role in the organization of international conferences on regional cooperation in the Middle East.

Prof. Narlı has extensive experience in working with women NGOs in Turkey. Having strong academic background in gender and conflict studies, Narli has undertaken research and training activities, including being a trainer in conflict resolution at seminars of the Southeast Europe Leadership Initiatives for Women NGOs in the Balkan countries in 2000 and 2001. Narli also participated in the Turkish Delegation to Beijing +5 Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the 21st Century (23rd special session of the UN General Assembly in 2000), and was a member of the Turkish Delegation of the UN 50th and 51th Sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women in 2000 and in 2010.

Müge Ekerim Akbulut received her BA in Psychology from Bogazici University as valedictorian of her department in 2014. Between 2014-2015 she did her internship in Erenköy Mental Health Hospital in Istanbul and in a private psychological consulting center, Altis, where she worked with children displaying emotional and behavioral problems. She worked as a teaching and research assistant at Koç University between 2015-2019 and at the same time coordinated several research on developmental psychology at Child and Family Studies Laboratory at Koç University. She mainly studied development of theory of mind, empathy and emotion understanding in children and young adults, and received her PhD degree from Koç University in 2019 with her work on development and use of theory of mind. Her work on mentalization skills of children and young adults has been published in several international peer-reviewed journals and presented in national and international conferences. Currently, she is working as an assistant professor at Istanbul 29 Mayis University and continuing her research on development of children’s socio-cognitive and socio-emotional skills.

İlayda Eskitaşcioğlu graduated from Bilkent University’s Faculty of Law and Leiden University’s European and International Human Rights Law Advanced Studies Master’s Programme. She is an attorney at law at Ankara Bar Association and is currently a PhD student researching on international human rights law at Koç University. She is a Stanford University AMENDS Fellow, she represented Turkey at the G(irls20) Summit 2016 in Beijing and she is an active G(irls)20 Ambassador. She is the founder of We Need to Talk, an NGO which aims to empower rural women in Turkey, through providing them access to menstrual products and destroying the stigma around menstruation. Her academic interests are international human rights law, business and human rights, gender equalty, sustainable development, women’s sexual and reproductive rights, and child labour. She has been recently chosen as a member of UN Women’s Beijing +25 Global Youth Task Force.

Berra Karayel graduated from Izmir Ödemiş Science High School in 2015 and started her undergraduate education in Koç University Philosophy department. At the same time, she pursues the Double Major program with Sociology, and simultaneously continues the "Cognitive and Brain Sciences" and "Gender Studies" specialization programs. She is particularly interested in studies on gender equality, feminist movement, women's employment, gender roles, international women’s health, human rights, justice and role distribution within family.

Doğa Dilbilmez graduated from Izmir Bornova Anatolian High School in 2014 and started his undergraduate degree at Koç University, Department of International Relations. During his undergraduate education, he completed Sociology Double Major and History Minor programs as well as the specialization programs of “International Political Economy” and “European Studies”, then graduated in the Fall semester of 2019. He is particularly interested in migration studies, security policies, social change and development, human rights and international political economy. He pursues to actively participate in research projects.