Core Program Grows with New Academicians
12 September 2023
Kadir Has University Core Program continues to grow with new academics joining our academic staff. We’re happy to introduce our new colleagues to you.
Dr. Akın Sefer
Following his BA in Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University, and his MA at the Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History at the same university, he received his Ph.D. in History at Northeastern University in 2018. His dissertation studies working-class formation in the context of industrialization and reform processes by focusing on the Ottoman Imperial Arsenal in the nineteenth century. Between 2018-2021, as a postdoctoral researcher in an ERC project (UrbanOccupations OETR) at Koç University, he worked on nineteenth-century Ottoman population registers and mapping these registers via GIS. Since 2021, he has been the principal investigator of a TÜBİTAK-1001 project titled “Shipbuilding and Labor Migration in the Black Sea Coast and Istanbul, 1827-1878”. His research and publications focus on modernization, labor, migration, and maritime history in the late Ottoman Empire.
Dr. Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim
Dr. Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim is a scholar of trauma and memory studies, gender and sexuality studies, comparative literature, and environmental humanities whose research focuses on how contemporary literature addresses questions of racial and social justice, transcultural memory studies, theories of collective responsibility, and the environmental humanities. In particular, her work examines climate trauma, solastalgia, extractivism, extinction, and environmental justice in world literature, film, and the visual arts from the Middle East and Africa as well as their Anglophone diaspora.
As a Fulbright Fellow, Gündoğan İbrişim received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Washington University in St. Louis, where she taught comparative literature, world literature, global and area studies, and English composition. Prior to joining Kadir Has University, she worked as a senior lecturer at Istanbul Technical University, School of Foreign Languages. From 2021 to 2023, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action postdoctoral fellow at Sabancı University, SU Gender Center. She the co-author of Gaflet: Modern Türkçe Edebiyatın Cinsiyetçi Sinir Uçları (2019, Metis). She is currently completing a book entitled Toward a Slow Witnessing in World Literature: Thinking and Surviving with the Earth (under-contract with Routledge; Routledge Series in Comparative Literature).
Enes Akdağ
Enes Akdağ received his bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Relations Programme, from Istanbul Şehir University, in 2017. He completed the Cinema and Television Double Major Programme, in 2020. During his undergraduate years, he worked at various positions in advertising and film production companies, in Istanbul. Between 2017 and 2019, he wrote and directed a total of five short films, two of which received short film production grant from the General Directorate of Cinema of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey. In 2022, he graduated from the Media and Communication Studies Master’s Programme, at Galatasaray University, with his thesis titled “Current Aspects of Communal Viewing Experience: Subscription Based Video On-Demand Platforms and Online Watch Parties”. He has been continuing his PhD in Communication Studies, at Kadir Has University, since 2022. His PhD research focuses on viewing experiences and political economy of moviegoing in Kadıköy, a former resort area.
Her current research interests include film design, new cinema history, queer cinema, digital ethnography, media archaeology and children and media. As a qualitative researcher, Akdağ’s researches have been published in many prestigious educational institutions ranging from the University of Birmingham/UK to the University of Melbourne/Australia.
Dr. Nora Tataryan
Nora Tataryan completed her PhD degree at the Women & Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto as a Connaught Scholar, her Master’s degree in Cultural Studies at Sabancı University (Istanbul) and her Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy at Galatasaray University (Istanbul) and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. In 2022, she participated to the Turkish-Armenian Relations research project hosted by University of Cambridge Interfaith Programme as a Visiting Scholar.
In her doctoral dissertation “ Lingering Between Fiction and Reality: An Aesthetic Approach to the Legacy of Catastrophe in Turkey” Tataryan worked on the theoretical openings of approaching state violence through the possibilities of art and fiction. Having presented her research internationally and published her work in academic and non-academic journals and books, Tataryan’s research interests include aesthetics, collective memory, genocide studies, feminist philosophy and psychoanalysis.
Besides her academic expertise, Tataryan worked as a researcher in art institutions such as Arter and Salt and collaborated with Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts for 15th and 16th Istanbul Biennale. Having published blog entries, fiction, literary and art critics through various media Tataryan also worked as a managing editor in the journal “Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience” between 2018-2020.
Dr. Onur Pusuluk
Dr. Onur Pusuluk began his academic career at Istanbul Technical University by pursuing a double major in Molecular Biology and Genetics and Physics Engineering. Onur conducted all his B.Sc. studies at the interface of physics and biology with a strong interest in neuro-immunological interactions and the evolution of genetic code. He completed his Ph.D. in the Physics Department of the same university, where he also worked as a research assistant for ten years. He investigated open system dynamics of quantum correlations in hydrogen-bonded molecular systems and their role in nonequilibrium processes such as proton disorder phase transitions and enzyme catalysis. As part of this study, he spent a year as a recognized student in the Frontiers of Quantum Physics group at the University of Oxford. Following his Ph.D. In Feb 2019, Onur joined QuEST (Quantum Enabling System Technologies) Team at Koç University for his postdoctoral training. For the past three years, he has led an independent research project and group within the same institution.
Dr. Onur Pusuluk has become a Visiting Faculty Member at KHAS through a joint affiliation between the Core Program and the Molecular Biology and Genetics Department. His theoretical studies focus on quantum biology, quantum thermodynamics, quantum information, and their intersection, utilizing computational methods such as quantum chemistry, artificial neural networks, and tensor networks. Onur aims to shed light on complex phenomena such as life, energy, and time by using the conceptual and theoretical foundations of the second quantum revolution, with the qDISCorD (q-Delocalized Information Systems & Correlated Dynamics) team he will establish here.
Dr. Tuna Pesen
Dr. Tuna Pesen received her B.Sc. in Physics from Boğaziçi University in 2014, her M.Sc. in 2016, and her Ph.D. in 2022. Having completed her graduate studies in theoretical cosmology, Dr. Tuna Pesen continued her research in experimental biophysics during her doctoral studies.
She completed her doctoral studies in developing a non-invasive diagnostic method for endometriosis disease using Raman spectroscopy together with machine learning and examining the effects of radiotherapy doses on red blood cell mechanics using optical tweezers. Continuing to research the universal behavior of the cytoskeleton under mechanical effects, Dr. Tuna Pesen continues her studies in the field of modeling these characteristic behaviors with simulation.
Zeynep Tunay Gül
Zeynep Tunay Gül received her BA from the Department of Foreign Language Education at Middle East Technical University and received her MA in Adult Education from Marmara University. She is currently at her doctoral dissertation stage at the Department of Educational Sciences of Yıldız Technical University.
Her main areas of expertise are adult education, volunteerism, instructional design, motivation, and mindfulness for adults. She is a volunteer in İLKYAR, a foundation that aims to create opportunities for students in rural and underdeveloped areas (especially in boarding schools) so that they can commit themselves to their education. She also holds volunteer membership for children under state protection in Children’s Houses Coordination Center (ÇEKOM) under the umbrella of the Directorate of Family, Labor and Social Services.