Project Team

Rahime  Süleymanoğlu Kürüm
(Chair)

Rahime Süleymanoğlu Kürüm is an associate professor at the department of Political Science and International Relations. She is also an associate member of Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research. She received her PhD in Politics and international Relations from the University of Nottingham, UK, in 2012. Her thesis focused on the Europeanisation of national foreign policy in non-member states. She taught gender and EU-related courses in various universities in Turkey at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, worked as a member of the teaching team in the Jean Monnet Module “Women’s Development and Europeanisation of Gender Policies”, organized workshops and seminars at Istanbul Ticaret University. Her research focusses on Europeanisation, EU foreign policy, Turkish foreign policy, gendering EU studies, gender and diplomacy and elite sociology. She is the author of ‘Conditionality, the EU and Turkey: From Transformation to Retrenchment’ (Routledge, 2019) and co-editor of ‘Feminist Framing of Europeanisation: Gender Equality Policies in Turkey and the EU’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). Her articles are published in high-ranking journals such as Political Studies Review and Geopolitics.

Aybüke Ceren Çolakoğlu, 
(Project Assistant) 

Melis Cin
(Academic Consultant)

F. Melis Cin is senior lecturer in Faculty of Arts and Social Science at Lancaster University. Cin holds a Ph.D. in gender studies from the University of Nottingham, UK, 2014; She is at the same time a visiting research fellow at the University of Free State, South Africa. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in psychology of gender, gender and women’s studies, methods in social science, introduction to social sciences, sociology of education and critical thinking. Her research focuses on gender, peace and education; women’s development; feminist theory. She also writes extensively on epistemic justice, feminist capabilities and participatory arts methods. She leads one of the most prestigious projects of the UKRI (United Kingdom Research and Innovation) on Decolonising and Gendering Peace Education in Africa.

Özge Zihnioğlu
(Academic Consultant)

Özge Zihnioğlu is a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Liverpool. She studies and publishes extensively on Turkish civil society, EU civil society support, and Turkey-EU relations. Her research has received funding from Turkey’s Scientific and Technological Research Council, the British Academy, the British Council and the Mercator Foundation. Zihnioğlu is the author of European Union Civil Society Policy and Turkey: A Bridge Too Far? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and EU-Turkey Relations: Civil Society and Depoliticization (Routledge, 2020). Her articles have been published in international journals such as Journal of Common Market Studies, Third World Quarterly, Social Movement Studies, Turkish Studies and Voluntas, among others. She received the Young Scientist Award from the Science Academy (2015) and from the International Relations Council (2018) in Turkey. Zihnioğlu is a member of the Carnegie Endowment’s Civic Research Network. Her contacts with civil society will be a great asset for FEJUST to reach wider audience and bring the FEJUST activities closer to the public.

Atakan Yılmaz
(Administrative project assistant)

Atakan Yılmaz is a Research Assistant at Department of Political Science and International Relations at Bahçeşehir University and PhD.Candidate at Galatasaray University. His research focuses on the role of diplomacy and international law in contemporary security policies and the computational social science research methods.

Damla Bayraktar Aksel
(internal assessor, evaluator)

Damla Bayraktar Aksel is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Bahçeşehir University and a Research Associate at Migration Research Center at Koç University (MiReKoc). She previously held the position of postdoctoral researcher and coordinator at MiReKoc. She received her PhD in Political Science and International Relations at Koc University, completed her MA in Public Policy at Science Po Paris and B.A. in Sociology from Galatasaray University. Her research focuses on migration governance, transactionalism, diasporas, irregular migration, EU-Turkey relations in relation to migration. She also completed her MA dissertation on women NGOs in Turkey from the perspective of Europeanisaiton. At MiReKoc, she participated as a team member in internationally funded research, and she has extensive expertise on project management and administration. The projects that she participated are: 2015 - National researcher for FP7 project LEFAMSOL, 2015 - ICMPD's "study of smuggling of migrants", 2017-19 - National researcher for Horizon2020, CEASEVAL, 2019 - National researcher for Horizon2020, CROSS-Migration

Digdem Soyaltın (teaching and training associate)

She is Associate Professor of European Politics at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at AU. She has managed a Jean Monnet Module project before (2018-2021) and worked as an associate in different international projects. She has expertise and advanced level of experience in research and teaching in EU subjects.

Selin Türkeş-Kılıç
(External Evaluator)

Selin Türkeş-Kılıç is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations of Yeditepe University (Istanbul). She is the coordinator of the Jean Monnet Module European Union: Deeper Integration by Overtaking Crisis (2019-2022). She received her B.A. in International Relations from Bilkent University (Ankara) (2004) and her PhD in Political Science from Sabancı University (Istanbul) (2012). She has worked at the University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain as a Marie Curie fellow (May 2011 - May 2012). She was a visiting researcher at ARENA, University of Oslo, Norway (spring 2010). Her research focuses on the discursive and argumentative processes in the policymaking of Turkey and the European Union. Her publications appear in various international edited books and journals including Journal of European Public Policy, Turkish Studies, and European Foreign Affairs Review.