Şirin Tekeli Research Awards Announced
The winners of "2018 Şirin Tekeli Research Awards", organized by Sabancı University Gender and Women's Studies Center of Excellence (SU Gender), with the support of the Consulate General of Sweden in Istanbul, in memory of Şirin Tekeli, who had conducted pioneering work on democracy, academic freedom, gender equality, and feminism, were announced. The award ceremony was held in the conference organized for the purpose of preserving, sharing and diversifying the rich heritage left by Şirin Tekeli.
The young researchers who won the Research Award, organized by Sabancı University Gender and Women's Studies Center of Excellence (SU Gender) in memory of Şirin Tekeli, who passed away last year, with the support of the Consulate General of Sweden in Istanbul were announced at a conference held at the Minerva Palas on Saturday, December 1, 2018. Merve Kutuk-Kuriş, Petek Onur, Caner Hazar received the Şirin Tekeli Research Award, which aims to support and encourage gender-focused research in Turkey; Nazife Koçukoğlu, Cemile Gizem Dinçer, Bermal Küçük, Rüya Telli, Burcu Bakö, Cansu Tekin and Elifcan Çelebi were given the Research Incentive Award.
The applications of doctoral students and researchers who completed their PhD a maximum of 15 years ago have been accepted for the assessment. The submitted research proposals were assessed by an inter-university selection committee based on the international academic criteria. The 2018 Selection Committee consisted of Yeşim Arat, Fatmagül Berktay, Sibel Irzık, Deniz Kandiyoti and Ayşe Öncü.
We want to share Şirin Tekeli's multi-layered legacy of with young researchers
Ayşe Gül Altınay, Director of SU Gender, gave the opening speech of the conference and stated that with this award, they wanted to share Şirin Tekeli's multi-layered legacy with young researchers and to diversify and grow it, and she added:
“Sirin Tekeli was the first name of feminism for many of us. Şirin Tekeli embraced everyone, approached all women and femininity with love – even when she made her strongest objections – and gave courage, excitement and inspiration with her every word and stance, and her feminism focusing on doing, building, including and bringing everyone together, acting with solidarity and transforming life deeply continues to pave our way.”
Fatmagül Berktay, faculty member of the Faculty of Political Sciences, Istanbul University, who, like Şirin Tekeli, has worked for the Women's Library and Information Centre for many years, and for the Istanbul University Women's Studies Center, Turkey's first academic women's studies center, mentioned in her speech with the theme of “A Life Dedicated to Equality and Freedom”, Şirin Tekeli's individual and intellectual courage, her commitment to her principles, how she has not hesitated to criticize herself or share her weaknesses, how she had inspired and empowered many women throughout her life, and how much space she had opened up to transform life.
The presentation titles of the researchers who received the first Şirin Tekeli Research Awards in 2017:
Building the Common: Women Experiences in the Collective Places in Turkey
A Study on Women-Oriented Community Centers of Local Governments in Ankara
Women/Feminist Movements in Turkey in the Light of the Concepts of Alliance, Solidarity and Contradiction
The Production of Rotten: Interspecies Encounters and Gender on Uploads"
Married to a Miner: Women Never Stop Here
Everyday Life of Women Working at Nazilli Sümerbank Cotton Printing Factory as a Place of Memory
Surviving, Standing, Seeking Justice: Women in High Criminal Courts
Women's Authorship in the Ottoman Era (1895-1908)
Female Translators as New Actors of Turkish Publishing Life: Change of Language, Theory, and Profession (1980-2002)
Home as a Meeting Place: A Study on the 'Ideal Home' in 1950s in Turkey through Aliye Berger's Atelier-Apartment in Narmanlı Han
About Şirin Tekeli:
Şirin Tekeli passed away in June 2017 and left a very rich legacy. Şirin Tekeli pioneered the establishment of women's and gender studies in Turkey in Turkish, with her associate professorship dissertation "Kadınlar ve Siyasal-Toplumsal Hayat" (İletişim, 1982) at Istanbul University, which was a first in her field in 1978, and "1980'ler Türkiye'sinde Kadın Bakış Açısından Kadınlar" (Iletisim, 1990) one of the first interdisciplinary compilations of feminist women's studies in Turkey, and her first feminist articles in Somut newspaper in the early 1980s, more than 20 women and democracy-oriented books she translated from French and English, and articles she wrote for international academic journals and compilations.
Şirin Tekeli was also the pioneer and driving force of many steps taken towards the institutionalization and empowerment of civil society, the feminist movement and gender equality policies. Between 1985 and 1990, she played an active role in the campaign demanding the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the efforts for the Solidarity Walk Against Beating, the Kariye Festival, the Purple Needle Campaign and the Civil Law reform.
She was a co-founder of the Human Rights Association in 1986, the Istanbul Women's Library and Information Centre Foundation in 1989, the Mor Çatı Women's Shelter Foundation in 1990, the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly Turkey in 1993, and the Association for Support of Women Candidates (KA-DER) and Winpeace – Women's Initiative for Peace in 1997.
Source: GazeteSU