Symposium President
İbrahim Okan Akkın is a graduate of Middle East Technical University (METU, 2007) Department of Philosophy. He completed his MA (METU, 2011) with his thesis concerning the possibility of participatory democracy in light of Hannah Arendt’s theory of action, Rousseau’s notion of direct democracy and Habermasian theories of communicative action and decentred models of deliberation. In his PhD dissertation (METU, 2017), he focused on Deleuze’s conception of difference and becoming with an eye to trace the political outcomes of the ontology of becoming in contemporary art. His main areas of interest are social & political philosophy, aesthetics, history of art, mythology, 17th & 18th-century philosophy, contemporary philosophy and 21th-century philosophy. Between January 2010-June 2017, Akkın worked as a Research Assistant at METU, Department of Philosophy. In January 2017 he became a faculty member at Ardahan University, Department of Philosophy. Since January 2017, he is serving as the chair of the Department of Philosophy, and in July 2018 he was nominated as the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities & Literature at Ardahan University. During his PhD at METU, Akkın took part in the amateur theatre club of the university, and ever since he has been particularly interested in interdisciplinary studies on performance art and political theory. Apart from philosophy, travelling is the most indispensable engagement of his life.
Committee Members
Dr Tonguç Seferoğlu did his undergraduate work at Middle East Technical University Department of Philosophyand also completed an Master’s there in 2013. He graduated from King’s College London in 2018 where he obtained his PhD in Philosophy for a thesis on Plato’s Phaedo. Dr Seferoğlu’sresearch interests centre around ancient Greek philosophy. He is interested in the role of dialogue form in Plato’s writings and Plato’s metaphilosophy. He also has interests in Neoplatonist tradition, especially their commentaries on Plato’s dialogues. During his Phd studies at King’s College London, Dr Seferoglu led weekly tutorial for modules on ancient Greek philosophy, Hume, Descartes and epistemology. Dr Seferoglu joined Ardahan University Department of Philosophy in 2019.
Erman Kaçar is a research assistant in the Department of Philosophy in Ardahan University. He is a graduate of Ankara University Department of Mathematics (Algebra and Geometry) and received his master’s degree from the Department of Philosophy (Systematic Philosophy and Logic), Ankara University. On his master thesis (A.U. 2016), Kaçar conducted a comparative analysis of the concepts of ‘the One’ and ‘the Void’ in the ontologies of Badiou and Spinoza. He worked on Badiou and Lacan ontologies, and gave seminars on Lacan ontology and topology. He calls contemporary French philosophy “the new face of philosophy” and focuses on the modern and postmodern spirit of this new face of philosophy in his work. In this context, his fields of study are ontology, ethics, psychoanalysis, mythology, post-structuralism and contemporary French philosophy. He is currently working on a PhD thesis entitled “Looking Through the Nietzsche(s’) Eye(s) on the Possibility of Morality: Nietzsche versus Kant”.
Dr. Neşe Şenel is a research assistant in the Department of English Language and Literature, Ardahan University. She graduated in 2012, with her BA major in American Culture and Literature and her minor in International Relations. She completed her MA in English Language and Literature at Erciyes University in 2015 with a master thesis entitled as “An Ecofeminist Reading on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing.” Dr. Şenel completed her PhD studies in the Department of English Language and Literature at Pamukkale University in 2020 with her dissertation entitled as “A Comparative Analysis of Death and Suicide within the Poetry of Sylvia Plath and Nilgün Marmara”. Her research interests include ecocriticism, ecofeminism, gender studies, postmodern dystopian & utopian fiction, confessional poetry and psychoanalysis.
Özlem Gürpınar is a Research Assistant at the Painting Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Ardahan University. She completed her undergraduate studies at the Painting Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Ataturk University in 2014. She completed her master’s degree (MA) at the Painting Branch Department of Ataturk University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 2018, and, in the same year, She began Qualification Training in Art, and still continues her education. She works on topics such as contemporary art, art and society, the contemporary art market.
Sümeyye Kara completed her bachelor degree in Departmant of Sociology in Ankara University Faculty of Languages and History-Geography (2017), and her master’s degree in Institute of Social Sciences in Yıldırım Beyazıt University (2021) with thesis titled “Xenophobia as a Reflection of the Native-Foreign Relationship in the 21st Century”. She examined the relational situation of the two actors of migration, the native and the foreigner. Sheis a Research Assistant at the a research assistant in the Department of Sociology in Ardahan University.
Umay Bahadır, completed her undergraduate education in the Department of Sociology at Akdeniz University in 2014; fınıshed her Master with the thesis she wrote on “The Problem of Immigrants’ and Refugees” in 2018. While writing her PhD dissortation at Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University on “An Examination of Syrian Neighborhood in Urban Area: Case of Altındağ District”. Focusing mainly on migration, she is researching the network, socio-economic and socio-cultural situations of Syrians in the urban area. In this context, Migration Sociology is the main field of study, but also works in the fields of Urban Sociology and Sociology of Education. She has been working as a Research Assistant at Ardahan University, Department of Sociology since 2019.
Serpil Kaygın completed her bachelor’s degree at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University Department of Philosophy (2009) and her MA degree in 2013 at Ankara University, Department of Philosophy, Department of History of Science. She then achieved her Ph.D. in the same department with the dissertation titled “A Research on the Origins of the Idea of the Law of Nature” in 2020 and started her career as a research assistant at the Department of Philosophy at Ardahan University. “History of Science”, “Philosophy of Science” and “Social Sciences and Logic” are the courses that she currently lectures at Ardahan University. Her main fields of study are Comparative Medieval Islam and Christian History of Science and Philosophy of Science.
Zeynep Uludağ completed her bachelor degree in psychology in Hacettepe University (2010) and her MSc in health psychology in University of Leeds (2015). She also carried on her PhD in University of Leeds (2020). Consequently, she has started working in Ardahan University in 2020 as an academic member. The lectures she delivers in Ardahan University are as followings; psychology of art, industrial and organisational psychology, research technics, searching database in science and introduction to psychology. Lastly her research interests are neuroimaging, decision making and stress.
Özlem Ünlü earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Ankara University in 2004 and received her M.S. from Middle East Technical University in 2011 with thesis titled The Problem of Justice in the Philosophies of Rousseau and Kant. She holds doctorate from Middle East Technical University (2018). The title of her doctoral thesis is Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt on the Tension between Sovereign and Law in which the tension in question is examined through the question of the state of exception as necessary decisions by sovereign power, running against legal limitations by law. Ünlü’s researches focus mainly on legal and political philosophy, modern philosophy. Özlem Ünlü currently teaches at Philosophy Department, Selçuk University.
Fevzi Burhan Ayaz, who is a graduate of Middle East Technical University Department of History (2014), received his master’s degree at Bilkent University Department of European History (2017). In his master’s thesis entitled Punishment for Violent Crimes: Aggression and Violence in the Early Germanic Law Codes, he investigated the legal and socio-cultural history of the Germanic tribes who settled in Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and attempted to “shed light” on the daily life in the Early Middle Ages. He also made various conference presentations regarding the history of nomadic tribes of pre-modern world, which is a subject he has a particular interest in. Fevzi Burhan Ayaz is one of the authors of the book, Orta Çağ’a Yeni Yaklaşımlar: Ekonomi, Savaş, Kilise, Yaşam that was published by Tarih Vakfı in 2019. Currently, he is carrying on his PhD research on the subject of Anglo-Saxon history at Bilkent University, and working as an instructor at the same institution.
Press Advisor:
Yaşar Öztürk is working as a Media and Public Relations Manager at Ardahan University. Öztürk, completed his bachelor’s degree at Near East University Department of Communication (2007). Öztürk, received his master’s degree from the Department of Business Management Cambridge College USA (2013). In 2018, he has started working as an academic member at the Department of Marketing and Advertising at Ardahan University. He is currently as a PhD student at Atatürk University Basic Communication Sciences Department. His Phd dissertation entitled as Digital Gastronomy: YouTube Food Influencers and Local Food Cultures. His research interests include culture industry, social media and food culture.
III. International Symposium on Mythology 