Istanbul Bilgi University is a private university and a non-profit institution. With more than 30.000 students (50 % of whom are on scholarship) and a faculty of nearly 900, BİLGİ offers undergraduate and graduate programs in social sciences, economics, business, communications, arts, law, engineering and architecture. The University has several research centers specialized in youth studies, children studies, civil society studies, migration studies, sociology and education studies, and human rights studies. Istanbul Bilgi University is a renowned institution with several different social outreach projects ranging from combating poverty to teaching European integration.
Prof. Dr. Ayhan Kaya
Ayhan Kaya is Professor of Politics and Jean Monnet Chair of European Politics of Interculturalism at the Department of International Relations, Istanbul Bilgi University; Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence; and a member of the Science Academy, Turkey. He is currently European Research Council Advanced Grant holder (ERC AdG, 2019-2024). His recent manuscript is Populism and Heritage in Europe. Lost in Diversity and Unity (London: Routledge, 2019). Some of his other books are Turkish Origin Migrants and their Descendants: Hyphenated Identities in Transnational Space (Palgrave, 2018), Europeanization and Tolerance in Turkey (London: Palgrave, 2013); Islam, Migration and Integration: The Age of Securitization (London: Palgrave, 2012).
Prof. Dr. Koray Akay
Koray Akay is a Professor of Economics at Istanbul Bilgi University. Among the courses he taught are advanced macroeconomics, growth and mathematical economics. His research interests include macroeconomics, development, political economy and economic history.
Dr. Fatma Yilmaz-Elmas
Fatma Yılmaz-Elmas is a post-doctoral researcher at Istanbul Bilgi University’s European Institute, the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. Yılmaz-Elmas has a Ph.D. in International Relations/European Studies from Ankara University with a dissertation on the EU migration-foreign policy nexus, for which she conducted research at the University of Pittsburgh’s Jean Monnet European Union Centre of Excellence in 2012. She also worked as a researcher for over 10 years at an Ankara-based independent think-tank, besides having editorial experiences of a Turkish policy magazine and online news portal. She is mainly interested in EU external migration policies, readmission, racism and xenophobia, Islamophobia and Turkey-EU relations.
Kübra Doğan Yenisey
Holding a professor's degree in the field of Labor Law and Social Security Law. Doğan Yenisey has received her doctorate degree from the Faculty of Law, Geneva University in 2000. Having worked as a full-time faculty member at İstanbul Bilgi University since 2008, Doğan Yenisey served as Director of LL.M in Law and PhD in Private Law programs and Director of Comparative Labor and Social Security Law Research Center, and also worked as Adjunct Researcher at Freiburg Albert Ludwigs University, Institute for Labor Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (Trier University) and Institute of European and Comparative Law (Oxford University). Speaking English, French and German, Doğan Yenisey has various books and articles on Labor and Social Security Law that have been published in the country and abroad.
Prof. Pınar Uyan Semerci
Prof. Pınar Uyan Semerci is a faculty member of the Department of International Relations at Istanbul Bilgi University. She is the Director of the Centre for Migration Research and currently the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities. Her research interests lie at the crossroads between political philosophy, political economy, social policy and methodology in which she focuses on topics relating to universalism, justice, human development, capability approach, poverty, migration, collective identity formation (gender, religion and nationalism), citizenship, othering, polarization, populism and well-being of children. She has coordinated numerous research projects and published mainly on capabilities, well-being, citizenship, child labour, othering and Syrians in Turkey.
İrem Gökçe Korkut
İrem Gökçe Korkut is currently a student at Istanbul Bilgi University's master's degree program in economics. She studied economics in Galatasaray University, graduating in 2019 with a dissertation on the effects of a minimum wage rise on different compositions of the labor market. Holding a DALF C1 certificate in French, she also has a license degree from Sorbonne University within the framework of a double diploma program.