Experts Database

Dr. Inci Öykü Yener-Roderburg is a full-time researcher at the Academy of International Affairs NRW and a lecturer at the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics, University of Cologne.
Until recently, Dr. Yener-Roderburg was a postdoc/research associate at the Institute for Turkish Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen, acted as an external collaborator for the ERC-funded project “Migration, transnationalism and social protection in (post-) crisis Europe”, CEDEM, University of Liège, Belgium, and contributed as a country expert for Germany in the NSW Government funded project “Building Democratic Resilience”, the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance (CDDGG), University of Canberra, Australia.
Dr Yener-Roderburg holds a PhD in Political Science (Cotutelle) from the University of Strasbourg and the University of Duisburg-Essen, and an MA from the Australian National University. Her research interests include external voting, transnational political engagement of migrants, citizenship and qualitative research methods. Dr Yener-Roderburg has published in high-impact academic journals and is frequently featured in the European media in particular.

In 2020, I have been awarded with the DCU School of Law and Government PhD scholarship under the supervision of Prof Federico Fabbrini. In particular, I am conducting research on the agreement concluded in 2016 between Turkey and the EU to stem the migration crisis and to evaluate this from the perspective of EU law and international human rights law including by analysing the growing case law of European and national courts. The research uses legal scholarship to analyse the legality of the agreement from the perspective of the authority of the EU to conclude it, but also resorts to political science literature on new intergovernmentalism to explain the dynamics of the conclusion of the agreement.

Deniz YETKİN AKER is an Associate Professor at Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Istanbul Beykent University. Before joining BU, she worked at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Tekirdağ Namık Kemal University. As an expert on migration issues in Turkey and globally, she has taught and researched at several institutions domestically. She received her BA in Philosphy from Bogazici University, an MA in Political Science from Sabancı University, and she gained her PhD in Political Science from Bilkent University. She has published extensively on international migration within Turkey and several regions in journals such as International Migration, Turkish Studies, and Migration Letters; and contributed in many edited volumes on related subjects. Deniz Yetkin Aker is fluent in English, intermediate in German and French, and conducts theoretical and empirical research. Her research interests are basically international migration, political participation, citizenship and social cohesion. She will be the founder and director of Istanbul Beykent University Migration and Diversity Research Center.

Prof.Dr. Ayselin YILDIZ is a faculty member of International Relations at Istinye University (Istanbul) and also affiliated scholar at Migration Research Center at Koç University (MiReKoc). She has extensive publications, research, projects and consultancy activities in the field of migration studies. She received her Phd in international relations and MSc in European Studies from Middle East Technical University (Turkey). She is the founding director of EU Center for 10 years (2005-2015) and founding head of UNESCO Chair on International Migration (2016-2023) for a distinguished span of seven years at Yasar University. She has also initiated the launch of international relations department at Yasar University in 2010 and was the head of department for 2 years. She held research fellowships at Wageningen University, University of California Berkeley (PhD fellow), University of Pittsburgh (post-doc) and at SciencesPo (visiting fellow). In addition to her academic pursuits, she also serves as the committee member at UNESCO Turkey Management of Social Transformations (MOST) and Migration Group. She is the author of the book The European Union’s Immigration Policy: Managing Migration in Turkey and Morocco, a seminal work published by the Palgrave Macmillan, a testament to her scholarly prowess. Referring to her expertise on internationalization of higher education, she is appointed as the Strategic Academic Advisor to Groningen Declaration Network.
Current research:

• Migration as an issue of EU-Turkey relations
• Externalization of migration policies and the implications in the Mediterranean region
• Migrant smuggling
• Irregular migration and readmission: policies and practices in Turkey
• Access and integration of refugees in higher education, skills recognition
• Intercultural communication for integration policies
• Housing and wellbeing for refugees

Aylin (Ph.D. in law, LL.M.) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lisbon, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Her project investigates the impacts of sea-level rise on human mobility and international protection. She focuses on the Portuguese-speaking African States (PALOP), especially Sao Tome and Principe. During her Ph.D., she focused on climate change - human mobility - human rights in the Pacific Island States, and undertook field research in Fiji and Samoa.

Fatih Yilmaz is a research fellow and project manager at Beyond the Horizon ISSG in Belgium. His research interest is mainly on integration of migrants, more specifically highly educated migrants/refugees/asylum seekers, orientation, integration policies. He has been managing and taking roles in different national/EU projects, such as All-in-one 4HER, Super-mentor, ORIENT8, Immune2infodemic, etc.