Objectives and Rationale
Current Activities
Members of the Center
International Advisory Board
Research Projects
Links

OBJECTIVES

The Center aims to

  • pursue cutting-edge and critical research on theoretical and practice- (managerial or policy) oriented themes.
  • provide a stimulating, challenging, and creative research environment and engage a critical group of scholars who share research interests in mutually supportive and encouraging debates.
  • disseminate its work through publications, conferences, workshops, seminars, and courses.

Aiming at interdisciplinarity, the CRTS expects to engage students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, demography, political studies, business studies, urban studies, history, media and communication studies, art theory and literary studies, postcolonial studies, gender studies, and cultural studies

Activities related to Research:

The Center

  • encourages and co-ordinates multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarly research.
  • promotes comparative studies supported by international scholarly networks.
  • assists junior and senior researchers, by acting as a host institute for their research
  • undertakes theoretical and practice-oriented research.
  • undertakes research, training, and consulting funded by external sponsors.
  • provides the opportunity to consult accumulated research materials, databases, and other documentation at its documentation center and through the links on the Center’s web site.

Activities related to Networking:

The Center

  • interacts with universities, centers, and other institutions.
  • invites visiting scholars and researchers, including doctoral students.
  • organizes conferences, workshops, seminars, and lectures.

Activities related to Publications:

The Center’s end-products appear

  • in a working paper series of the Center.
  • on the Center’s web site.
  • in international and Turkish journals, books, and edited books.

Activities related to Education:

The Center

  • offers classes/seminars and supervision to graduate students and thus supports graduate programs of several departments and faculties.
  • in the future, aims to provide/coordinate graduate and undergraduate study for highly qualified students, from Turkey and abroad.

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RATIONALE

Contemporary reality is one of rapid, expanding, and diverse global flows of objects, technology, information, money, images, ideologies, and people. These flows increase interactions and heterogeneity, change social relations and communities, and reshape identities and boundaries. In a globalizing world, it is crucial to understand the ambiguous complexity that arises from the nexus of these rapid flows and dynamics.

Within this nexus, societies are becoming more and more transitional, to varying degrees and forms. Present-day transitional societies are uniquely at once the expression of and catalyst for contemporary globalization processes. The transitions we experience are economic and political as well as sociocultural and technological. The imperatives of marketization, privatization, and liberalization coincide with the development of multicultural/multi-ethnic societies created by urbanization and immigration. To grasp the complex dynamics that characterize transitional societies, it is necessary to study the relationship between the global, regional, and local dimensions and manifestations of social, economic, political, and cultural processes and conditions.

Turkey, a place of rapid transition, is an interesting and opportune location for scholars studying transition. Turkey’s place in the world, its cultural characteristics, the recent and current transformations, as well as the experience of the sizeable expatriate population of Turks provides rich material and ground for addressing and reconsidering important issues in many disciplines: politics, business, economics, sociology, anthropology, demography, and cultural studies, to name a few. A research environment situated in the midst of this transitional society encourages new questions and insights and prompt innovative research and theories about social change.

ACTIVITIES

MEMBERS OF THE CENTER

  • Güliz Ger (Director) - Faculty of Business Administration
  • Özlem Sandıkcı - Faculty of Business Administration
  • Ahmet Ekici - Faculty of Business Administration
  • Örsan Örge - Faculty of Business Administration
  • Olga Kravets - Faculty of Business Administration
  • Feyzan Erkip - Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design
  • Alev Çınar - Department of Political Science and Public Administration
  • Dilek Cindoğlu - Department of Political Science and Public Administration
  • Nedim Karakayalı - Department of Political Science and Public Administration

INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD

  • Tamer Çavuşgil  - Michigan State University, USA
  • Michael Dolan, Carleton University, Canada
  • Jane Jenson, University of Montreal, Canada
  • Craig Murphy, Wellesley College, USA
  • John Rex  - University of Warwick, UK

RESEARCH PROJECTS

  • Duality and Diversity in the Lives of Immigrant Children, Nedim Karakayali
  • Shopping Malls in Turkey, Feyzan Erkip
  • Genetically modified Foods, Ahmet Ekici
  • Cultural Products and Globalization: Production and Consumption of Oriental Carpets - Fabian F. Csaba and Güliz Ger
  • Covered women and modernity - Özlem Sandikci and Güliz Ger
  • Advertising and Globalization, Özlem Sandikci

LINKS


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  • E-Mail:
    crts@bilkent.edu.tr

    Address:
    Center for Research in Transitional Societies
    Bilkent University, 06800
    Bilkent - Ankara
    Turkey

    Tel:
    +90 312 290 2949
    Fax:
    +90 312 290 2742