River Flowing North

Chapter 7

Dr. Merve ÇALHAN

Asst. Prof. Savaş ÇAĞLAYAN

Feride VURAL was born in 1993 in Çorum/Turkey. She completed her bachelor’s degree at Sakarya University, Social Work Department as a third-ranked student in the department between 2011 and 2015, and she also completed her master’s degree at Sakarya University Social Work Department between 2015 and 2018. Besides, she continued her studies abroad in 2013–2014 at Ostrava University in Czech Republic. As of 2016, she has been working in international humanitarian operation in the context of international and temporary protection area with asylum seekers, migrations and refugees in field of Turkey. In addition, she has many academic publications on disadvantaged groups in field of Turkey such as migrations, refugees, culture, violence, unemployment and disability.

Gül AKTAŞ was born in Ankara in 1974. She completed her primary, secondary, high school and university education in Ankara. In 1999, she received “İhsan Doğramacı Outstanding Achievement Award” from the Department of Sociology in the Faculty of Science and Letters in Hacettepe University as the first of her class. She received her master’s degree from the same university in 2004 and her doctorate in 2011. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gül Aktaş works on issues such as gender, young girls, youth and family. Her academic publications on Women in Production, Employment of Women in Rural Areas and Women Entrepreneurs, Family Studies, Women Issues in Urban Life, and Youth were published in national and international journals. She currently continues her studies as an associate professor at Pamukkale University, Faculty of Science and Letters, Department of Sociology.

Elif Fatma SALİHOĞLU is a research assistant at the architecture and design faculty in Kocaeli University. She received her BA and MA degree in interior architecture. Currently, she continues her doctoral thesis studies on migration history related to architecture interactions in the Department of Architecture in Kocaeli University. Her research areas are displacement architecture, Anatolian architecture history and environmental psychology.

Hülya ÇAKIR graduated from Kırıkkale University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology in 2010. In 2013, she graduated from Gazi University, Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology. She completed her PhD in Gazi University, Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology in 2016. She is currently working as an assistant professor at Yozgat Bozok University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology. Her research and teaching interests are focused on gender and women studies, consumption culture, rural sociology and women in rural areas.

Asuman Özgür KEYSAN held a PhD in School of Government and Public Policy from the University of Strathclyde, UK. Her thesis was on the contribution of women activists in Turkey to the meaning of civil society. She previously completed two master’s programs in European studies at the Middle East Technical University (METU), Turkey, and in political research at the University of Strathclyde. She is the author of the book titled Activism and Women’s NGOs in Turkey: Civil Society, Feminism and Politics (2019). Her research interests include migration, gender politics, civil society and social movements, Turkish politics and qualitative research methods. She is now a part-time lecturer in gender and women’s studies at METU. She has publications in peer-reviewed journals such as International Migration.

Merve ÇALHAN received her PhD in social policy at Kocaeli University in 2020. Her PhD dissertation title is “Resilience Opportunities of Syrian Children in Education Ecosystem: Darıca Case.” She graduated from Middle East Technical University with an MS degree in Middle East studies in 2008. She wrote her MS thesis about identity constructions of Iranian asylum-seeker children in Turkey. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in sociology in 2005 at Ege University. She worked in various EU-funded projects located in Southeastern Anatolia Region in Turkey. She has worked as a social development expert in social development programs and projects in policy design, implementation and evaluation processes in various regional development agencies of Turkey. Her research interests are identity construction and integration patterns of asylum-seekers and refugees, education resilience, Middle East politics, Iranian studies and regional development. She has written numerous OP-EDs in Middle East and Iranian politics. She is currently working as an expert in Presidency of the Republic of Turkey in Directorate of Communications.