Category: Board Members

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Elif Bengü received her bachelor’s degree in Measurement and Evaluation in Education from Hacettepe University. She then continued her graduate studies in the United States, completing a dual master’s and doctoral program in Instructional Design and Technology at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. Following her doctoral studies, she worked as an advisor at the International Office of the University of Kentucky.

After returning to Türkiye, she first joined Istanbul Okan University’s Faculty of Education, where she focused on teacher education and curriculum innovation. She later joined Abdullah Gül University (AGU), where she played a leading role in shaping the university’s educational innovation agenda. At AGU, she founded the Center for Learning and Teaching (CeLT), contributed to the redesign of undergraduate courses through active learning methods and technology-enhanced teaching, and led an interdisciplinary team in coordinating the Global Challenges and Responsibilities Curriculum, which integrates the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into higher education.

During her recent sabbatical in Japan, Dr. Bengü conducted research at the University of Tokyo on applying the Quintuple Helix Model to higher education in support of the SDGs. She collaborated with several universities, including Kanazawa University, Kyoto University, and the United Nations University (UNU). As a result of these collaborations, she was invited to join the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) Action Group on the Futures of Higher Education and Artificial Intelligence.

Dr. Bengü’s current research focuses on connecting higher education with the SDGs through transdisciplinary and community-based approaches. She explores how universities can collaborate with society to build healthier and more sustainable communities — aligning with the “Communiversity” concept articulated by Prof. Dzulkifli Abdul Razak, which envisions universities as integral parts of their communities.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Aylin Çakıroğlu Çevik received her bachelor’s degree in sociology from Ankara University in 2002. She began her graduate studies in sociology at Middle East Technical University (METU) that same year. After receiving her Master’s degree in 2007, she pursued her Ph.D. at METU. In 2011, she was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and she received her Ph.D. from METU in 2015. She worked as a research assistant in the Department of Sociology at METU from 2002 to 2015 and has worked at TED University, since 2017, first as a faculty member in the sociology department and then as the head of the Migration Studies Graduate Program. Her main research interests are sociology of education, higher education, social inequality, gender inequality, women academics, quality of life and well-being.

Feride Öksüz Gül received her Bachelor’s degree in English Language Teaching from the Faculty of Education at Boğaziçi University in 2012. She completed her Master’s degree in Educational Administration and Supervision at the Institute of Educational Sciences, Marmara University, in 2016, and earned her Ph.D. in the same program in 2020. She is currently serving as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Administration at the Faculty of Education, Istanbul Medeniyet University. Her research and teaching interests include higher education governance and management, early career experiences in academia, professional development policies, higher education pedagogy, and teaching and learning processes.

Dr. Öksüz Gül conducts qualitative research on governance models, the balance between autonomy and accountability, the transformation of academic labor, and faculty development within the context of Turkish higher education. Her recent work particularly focuses on student-centered teaching, relational pedagogies, and the reflections of academic care culture in teaching practices.

Şahabettin Akşab graduated as the top student from the Elementary Mathematics Education program at the Middle East Technical University in 2014 and subsequently served as a mathematics teacher within the Ministry of National Education between 2014 and 2016. He commenced his graduate studies in Educational Administration and Planning at METU in 2014, completed his master’s degree in Educational Administration at Gaziantep University in 2018, and received his Ph.D. in Educational Administration and Planning from METU in 2024. Dr. Akşab is currently a faculty member (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Educational Sciences at Gaziantep University. His research primarily focuses on student experience and development in higher education, student affairs administration, higher education policies, and internationalization in higher education.

After graduating from Karadeniz Technical University in 1999, he completed his master’s degree in 2004 and PhD in 2009 at Gazi University in the Department of Educational Administration. In 2012, he worked as a consultant at the Council of Higher Education for one year. In 2013, he was appointed as an Assistant Professor at Gazi University, Gazi Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Sciences. In the same year, he was accepted as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis in the USA and worked for a year. In 2018, he was appointed as Associate Professor and continued his duty at Gazi University. In 2021, he worked as a Research Associate at the University College London (UCL) Institute of Education (IOE) Education, Practice and Society Department in the United Kingdom. Since July 2023, he has been working as a professor at Gazi University, Gazi Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Sciences. His main research interests are educational leadership, management of higher education and educational reforms.

Dr. Mehmet Şengül received his PhD in the department of English Language Teaching at the University of Anadolu. After graduation, he worked as a language instructor at Ankara University from 2007 to 2010. In the period of 2010-2014, in addition to teaching courses in English education and working on language assessment and testing at Mustafa Kemal University, Dr. Şengül served as an Expert in International Relations Unit dealing with Bologna Studies, ECTS implementation and Diploma Supplement between 2010-2014. He worked as an Expert in Multilateral Relations Unit of International Relations Department at Council of Higher Education of Turkey. He has been serving as Erasmus Institutional Vice Coordinator at Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University. The areas of his expertise are foreign language education, language testing, ECTS, QF, QA, Internationalization and Mobility. He has some significant publications in higher education studies. His foreign languages levels are C2 level in English, B1 in German and A2 in French.

Dr. Kurtoğlu received his B.S. and M.S. in Political Science and Public Administration from METU. He completed his PhD in Sociology- on sociology of higher education- at the same university. Currently he is working at TEDMEM. He worked at METU Research Center of Applied Ethics as a post-doctoral researcher under DOSAP program in 2024-2025. He was a member of the management committee of the COST ReMO Researcher Mental Health Action (2020-2024). He was a visiting researcher at the Center for Organization, Innovation and Network at University of Marburg (Germany) in 2012, supported by DAAD Sandwich Program. He is the editor of the book titled ‘Neoliberalism, Knowledge and Universities’ published in Turkish by Notabene in 2019. He is among the co-editors of the book titled ‘20 Years of the Bologna Process, EHEA and Türkiye’ published in Turkish by Beykoz Üniversitesi Yayınları in 2022. His main fields of interest are the global trends in higher education, institutional diversity and alternative universities. He has a blog on the global and national developments in the field of higher education:

https://yuksekogretimarastirmalari.com/

Armağan Erdoğan received the title of Associate Professor from Higher Education Studies, which was opened as an academic field in Türkiye for the first time in 2015. She was awarded a scholarship from the Council of Higher Education and completed her postgraduate degrees in English and Comparative Literary Studies from the University of Warwick, England. In her doctoral thesis, she studied the educational effect of encountering the “foreign” in George Eliot’s novels about English life. After receiving her PhD in 2002, she worked at Kırıkkale University as a lecturer, head of department, and director of the foreign relations unit. Between 2008 and 2014, she worked as the International Unit Director and advisor to the president of the Council of Higher Education. During this period, she contributed to the preparation of international reports, coordinated the Bologna Process at the national level, and represented YÖK on many international platforms, such as Bologna Follow-Up Group (BFUG), representative of Türkiye, ENIC-NARIC Network Türkiye contact person, European University Association (EUA), and OECD-Institutional Governance in Higher Education (OECD-IMHE). Between 2013 and 2019, in addition to working as a faculty member at Ankara Social Sciences University, she also served as an advisor to the rector and director of the Higher Education Studies Center. Between 2009 and 2018, she was a member of the Turkish National Commission for UNESCO’s Gender Equality Specialized Committee. Her publications focus on higher education policies in Türkiye, the Bologna Process, international collaborations, quality assurance, and gender equality in higher education.

Gökçe Gökalp serves as a faculty member at the Educational Sciences Department in Middle East Technical University since 2012. She completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology and her Master’s degree in General/Experimental Psychology in California State University, Northridge. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. She held an administrative position as a student affairs specialist at the Rossier School of Education’s Doctoral Support Center for 4 years after receiving her Ph.D. In the center she was responsible for developing and providing academic support and advisement services to doctoral students in relation to dissertation writing process. She continued this work once she was employed as a faculty member at the Middle East Technical University as part of a Project related to future faculty development program, establishing the Graduate education and academic support office. During the 3 years of the project she developed and provided academic support services such as thesis writing, research methods, time management and organized orientation programs and thesis writing camps. She has currently expanded this work to also include researcher well-being and mental health through organizing seminars in these topics, through developing and sharing content to raise awareness about well-being of researchers via an online Academic well-being ¨Akademik İyi Yaşam¨ platform. Between 2016-2021 she has served as the vice dean of the Faculty of Education at the Middle East Technical University and served in university committees. She conducts research related to graduate education, the development of graduate students as future researchers and academicians, researcher well-being, approaches to raising academicians and crisis and crisis management in higher education.

Associate Professor Pinar Ayyildiz is a translator, sociologist and educational researcher. She has served Ihsan Dogramaci Bilkent University Vocational School of English Language Teaching as a teacher trainer for the Cambridge Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (DELTA) diploma program and as an academic and administrative coordinator for a total of ten years with multiple responsibilities. At the same institution, she completed the Cambridge In-service Certificate in English Language Teaching (ICELT) training program and the Cambridge Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (DELTA) international diploma program. Having worked in various higher education institutions for more than twenty years owning duties like being a course instructor, director of the School of Foreign Languages, director of the Learning and Teaching Unit, and Dean of Students, Ayyıldız’s main research focus is located within the field of Educational Administration. She holds editorial responsibilities in a fair number of international scientific publications such as Participatory Educational Research (PER), Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education (PTHE).