Projects 2022

YEAR	NAME OF THE PROJECT	PROJECT OBJECTİVE (BRIEF INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROJECT)
Center for Migration Research
2022	TurkuazLab - Strategies and Tools for Mitigating Polarization in Turkey Project	The TurkuazLab Project aims to raise awareness in Turkish society about polarization and the harm it does and to equip Turkish civil society, academia, media, and political parties with strategies and tools for mitigating polarization to contribute to a new ecosystem in Turkey with the prevalence of human rights, social harmony, and respect to others.
Center for Migration Research and Department of Sports Management
2022	SINAFE- Social Inclusion of African Athletes in Europe	SINAFE is a collaborative partnership project funded by EACEA – European Commission. The aim of the project is to explore the needs of migrant athletes via field research conducted in different countries and develop a support mechanism based on that evidence for social inclusion of migrant African athletes in Europe. As an output of the project, a curriculum that will contribute to the innovative approaches in the training of migrant athletes including rights, legal procedures, and professional information will be developed with the use of inclusive and empowering techniques. migrantathlete.com
BİLGİ Gender
2022	My Name is Human	To raise awareness on restrictions of social rights and freedom based on gender roles, BİLGİ Gender and AstraZeneca Türkiye partnered for ‘My Name is Human’ awareness project. YouTube videos and podcasts are recorded with academics, experts, sportspeople covering different topics related to gender equality at each session such as body image, business life, effects of pandemic on work life, access to healthcare and sports. Videos are live on My Name is Human YouTube, podcasts are live on Apple Podcast, Deezer and Spotify. Story book series covering narratives about gender inequality for children aged 7-10 is work in progress.
Human Right Law Research Center
2022	CEDAW Literacy for Legal Professionals	The project aims to increase the awareness of lawyers and to strengthen them on gender equality, violence against women and women's human rights, international standards on the human rights of women, international human rights mechanisms, individual application procedures, and interpretation and implementation of CEDAW. To accomplish these goals, a book of experts on CEDAW will be published, two launching events for the book in Ankara and in Istanbul will be organized in panel format, a needs assessment analysis meeting will be conducted in order to focus on the needs of the lawyers with regard to the international standards of the human rights of women, online trainings will be organized for women lawyers in different provinces of Turkey, monitoring and evaluation of these trainings will be conducted.
European Institute
2022	European Research Council (ERC) - Nativisim, Islamophobism, and Islamism in the Age of Populism: Culturalisation and Religionisation of What is Social, Economic, and Political in Europe	While native youth populations in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium feel increasingly rejected due to socio-economic, political, and psychological reasons and show a tendency for right wing populism and Islamophobic discourses, some Muslim and migrant youth populations that have been exposed to similar socio-economic and rejection processes show a tendency for Islamization processes. The goal of this research, with the novel scholarly lens/perspective that it will develop, is to show that these two youth groups who essentially have similar socio-economic, political, and psychological elements become radicalized by going through similar processes and they nurture their radicalism against one another. The research process includes extensive field works, literature review, and in-depth interviews. In the research, an extensive group of researchers and scientific advisory group will work together.
2022	MATILDE – Migration Impact Assessment to Enhance Integration and Local Development in European Rural and Mountain Regions	Funded under H2020, the research project MATILDE, coordinated by the Institute for Regional Development of Eurac Research (Bolzano/Bozen), along with a diverse group of partners, aims to understand the true development potential migration carries, with a specific focus on rural and mountain regions.
2022	Returning Home: Assyrians	In this research, which will be carried out within the scope of Elifsena Biroğlu's master's thesis, Assyrian families who migrated from their homeland in the 1990s and returned to Kafro Village of Mardin's Midyat district from European Union countries in the 2000s will be addressed. The homeland of the Assyrians, known as the first community to accept Christianity collectively, is a special region called Turabdin, a historical district of Mardin. The Assyrians, who continued their existence under Ottoman rule and especially in the Turabdin region since the 16th century, started to migrate from their homeland to a large extent from the late 19th century due to the policies followed and the economic conditions. The return of Assyrians to their homes, who want to prevent the loss of their culture and identity, is of vital importance. Understanding the main factors affecting the return of this group with a disadvantaged migration narrative will shed light on many other migration studies.
Center for Civil Society Studies
2022	Inclusive Learning Materials for Human Rights Education with Children	This project involves updating and digitizing the content of the Children Have a Say Board Game, and thereby making it accessible. The animation film prepared for children about children's rights (the it was broadcast on the platform of the Ministry of National Education and was viewed more than 59 thousand times) will be translated into Arabic, English and Kurdish. The animated film of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities will also be prepared.
2022	Capacity Building for Right Based CSOs through Distance Learning Program	The aim of the project is to develop and strengthen learning frameworks and methods of right based CSOs during 10 months, located outside of Istanbul (at least 10 different cities), to increase their capacity to continue their strategic management, their advocacy activities and their collaboration with their volunteers and activists during the pandemic of 2020s, by providing online and user friendly three videos, a training program with 6 online sessions (each 150 minutes) for 30 right-based CSOs, (at least half women) and a website with 3 videos, records of the online training sessions and a discussion forum. (kuluckacevrimiciaraclar.bilgi.org.tr)
2022	Online Social Incubation Support Program	Online Social Incubation Support Project primarily aims to support the capacity development of non-governmental organizations working on youth and/or ecology. 12 NGOs were selected to the program, 25 hybrid workshops were organized and 12 mentorship programmes are still running. Besides, an external monitoring and evaluation expert plays a significant role in the project. The centre offers trainings/workshops, networking, consulting, office space and mentoring opportunities for the NGOs and citizen initiatives participating in this program.
2022	Prevention of Child Labor Research and Model Development Project	The aim of the project is to understand the problems experienced by working children in all their dimensions and to develop tools for combating child labor. Having started with research in Bağcılar and Küçükçekmece districts in Istanbul, the project worked with different stakeholders such as trainers, social workers, decision-makers, and non-governmental organizations. All outputs such as reports, guidebooks, roadmaps on combating child labor, and videos produced in the project, can be accessed via the following website cocukisciligineson.bilgi.edu.tr.
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
2022	Developing and Testing a Sexual Coercion and Violence Prevention Program for Young Adults: An Empowerment-Based Participatory Approach	Sexual coercion and violence are defined as sexual acts that involve physical force, threat, manipulation or psychological pressure, and are carried out without a partner’s freely given consent. Available research shows that sexual coercion and violence are common in the lives of young adults, especially young women; they are considered as a hidden and invisible form of violence against women; and they pose short and long-term physical, sexual and psychological risks, and disrupt healthy emotional and social development processes. This project will benefit the career development of the project coordinator by increasing her experience in applied research and mental health interventions in the field of violence prevention, and increasing her knowledge of participatory research methods and program evaluation
Faculty of Business
2022	Decent Work in Foreign Trade Sector: Case of Turkish Textiles and Clothing Industries	This project tries to understand the working conditions in companies operating mainly in foreign trade in the textile and clothing sectors in Turkey and whether these conditions differ between white- and blue-collar workers in terms of gender. In addition, the project was designed to examine the effects of decent work conditions on employees' physical and subjective well-being. In this context, researchers try to identify gender gaps, which are seen to be neglected in the existing decent work literature and explain these gaps with the Structural Equation Model (SEM). The method consists of applying the questionnaire designed by the researchers to measure decent working conditions for Turkey and testing these conditions with employee wellbeing (output) indicators through the data obtained from the field. In this vein, 600 white- and 600 blue-collar workers (1200 in total) working in the textile and the clothing sector will be the sample of the research.