The rich legacy of Şirin Tekeli, who had conducted pioneering work on democracy, academic freedom, gender equality, and feminism since the 1980s, has shed light on the path of many researchers, academics and activists. We have been organizing the Şirin Tekeli Research Award to contribute to the preservation, sharing and diversification of this heritage, and the winners of the 2017 Award have been announced. We would like to thank all the participants who shared their valuable research proposals.
The Şirin Tekeli Research Award is organized to support and encourage gender-focused research in Turkey and open to doctoral students and all researchers who completed their doctorate a maximum of 15 years ago. The submitted research proposals have been evaluated by an inter-university selection committee based on the international academic criteria, which consisted of Yeşim Arat, Fatmagül Berktay, Sibel Irzık, Deniz Kandiyoti and Ayşe Öncü in 2017.
Winners of 2017 Şirin Tekeli Research Award
RESEARCH AWARD
Demet Bolat, "Familialism in Turkey and Women's Experiences in Places of Threshold"
Ezgi Burgan, "The Production of Rotten: Interspecies Encounters and Gender on Uploads"
Aylin Demir, "The AKP's Women's Education and Culture Centers: The Women's Face of Neighborhood Organizations"
RESEARCH INCENTIVE AWARD
Fatih Altuğ, "Women's Authorship in the Ottoman Era (1895-1908)"
Coşku Çelik, Ecehan Balta, "Married to a Miner: Differentiation of Housewife Experiences"
Sezen Çilengir, Arzu İnan, Rüya Telli, "Everyday Life of Women Working at Nazilli Sümerbank Cotton Printing Factory as a Place of Memory"
Özgür Sevgi Göral, "Surviving, standing, seeking justice: Women in high criminal courts"
İclal Ayşe Küçükkırca, "Women/Feminist Movements in Turkey in the Light of the Concepts of Alliance, Solidarity and Contradiction"
Yıldız İpek Mehmetoğlu, "Home as a Meeting Place: A Study on the 'Ideal Home' in 1950s in Turkey through Aliye Berger's Atelier-Apartment in Narmanlı Han"
Yonca Güneş Yücel, Gözde Orhan, "Female Translators as New Actors of Turkish Publishing Life: Change of Language, Theory, and Profession (1980-2002)"
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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.