Arsev Umur Aydınoğlu (2017 – current)
Dr. Arsev Umur Aydinoglu is Assistant Professor at the Middle East Technical University and an interdisciplinary social scientist. After completing his PhD dissertation in 2011 at the University of Tennessee, he worked at the University of South Carolina and NASA in the US and conducted research at the ELSI, Japan. His research focus is interdisciplinary collaborative science; however, he is interested in topics as diverse as virtual teams, research data management, astrobiology, origins of life, complex adaptive systems theory, evaluation studies, design thinking, STS and science communication.
+90 312 210 3864
arsevu@gmail.com
Şafak Kılıçtepe (2019 – current)
Dr. Şafak Kılıçtepe has completed her masters and doctorate in sociocultural anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. She did her minor in Gender Studies and specialized in medical anthropology. Her interdisciplinary dissertation title that she completed in August 2019 is “Reproductive Technologies, Pronatalism and Ethnicity: An Ethnography of Situated Reproduction in Turkey.” Her interests include science and society studies, reproduction and reproductive technologies, anthropological demography, nation-state, identity, race and ethnicity studies, gender, womanhood and manhood.
safakkilictepe@gmail.com
Gülizar Karahan Balya (2024 – current)
Dr. Gülizar Karahan Balya holds a PhD in philosophy from Middle East Technical University. The title of her dissertation completed in 2015 is “The Relation between Metaphysics and Art in Nietzsche’s Philosophy.” Her research interests include continental philosophy with a focus on Bergson and Nietzsche, philosophy of technology, applied ethics and ethics education. She currently works as a researcher at the Applied Ethics Research Centre, METU and co-leads a joint international project titled “Innovative Ethics Education for Major Technological and Scientific Challenges” (ETHICS4CHALLENGES).
kgulizar@metu.edu.tr
İskender Gökalp (2023 – current)
Melike Şahinol (2017 – current)
Melike Şahinol (Dr. rer. soc.) is a Research Fellow at the Orient-Institut Istanbul and head of the research field „Human, Medicine and Society“. She studied sociology, political science and psychology at Universität Duisburg-Essen. 2009 Melike joined the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard Kennedy School of Government for her PhD. In 2015 she completed her PhD in Sociology at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, entitled „The Techno-Cerebral Subject“. Her current research focus is 3D printing in health care. In addition, she deals with bio-/technology politics in Turkey, particularly in the field of human enhancement.
+90 212 293 6067 Ext: 133
sahinol@oiist.org
Emine Öncüler Yayalar (2019 – current)
Dr. Emine Öncüler Yayalar teaches courses on Science, Technology and Society at the Faculty of Engineering of Bilkent University. She holds a B.A. in Sociology from Boğaziçi University and M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in Sociology from Columbia University in New York. She has previously published on sociology of knowledge and sociology of expertise. Dr. Yayalar is the co-author of the book The Autism Matrix, which was awarded the Robert K. Merton book prize by the American Sociological Association. Her current research investigates social determinants of knowledge in medicine, science and technology.
+90 312 290 3486
emineonculer@bilkent.edu.tr
Erkan Saka (2020 – current)
Erkan Saka is professor of media and journalism studies at the School of Communication at Istanbul Bilgi University. He is currently the Head of the Media Department. He was recently a research scholar at Anthropology, UC Irvine (Fall 2018) and Science and Technology Studies, MIT (Spring 2019). His recent and current research topics include citizen journalism and social movements, online information fact-checking and verification issues, digital web archiving and internet histories, and ethnography of cryptocurrency circles in Turkey. He is a longtime political blogger (erkansaka.net) and a coordinator of a local TV show on social media (sosyalkafa.net). He is the author of Social Media and Politics in Turkey: A Journey through Citizen Journalism, Political Trolling, and Fake News (Lexington Books, 2019) and “Big data and gender-biased algorithms” in The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication (New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2020).
erkan.saka@bilgi.edu.tr
Former Contributors
Ali O. İlhan (2019 – 2021)
Dr. Ali O. Ilhan is Assistant Professor of Industrial Design and co-director of graduate studies of the interdisciplinary graduate program in Design, Technology, and Society at Ozyegin University in Istanbul, Turkey. Professor Ilhan completed his PhD in Sociology at Washington State University in 2013. He also holds BSc (2003) and MSc (2007) degrees in industrial design from Istanbul Technical University.
Harun Kaygan (2017-2020)
Dr. Harun Kaygan is Assistant Professor in Industrial Design at METU. A designer by training, he received his PhD in 2012 from the University of Brighton. In research, Harun is interested in cultural aspects and political implications of design, using new materialist frameworks such as ANT. His research interests include body and biopolitics in product development, and social design and activism.