Dr. Erika Wilkens-Sözen, Director

Dr. Wilkens-Sözen is the founding Director of the SU Istanbul program (2010).  She has a PhD in Political Science from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, Master’s degrees in International Relations (Lancaster University, UK) and in the Sociology of Development (University of Calgary), and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Calgary, Canada. She has taught and worked with international student programming at universities in the United States, Lithuania and Turkey. Her program development and teaching in Istanbul encourages students to become aware of unexamined assumptions about the ‘East’ and ‘West’, and then dislocate, complicate and reassess them;  democratization; secularism and Islam; nationalism and identity; diversity, minority and human rights; regional and domestic strategic and security issues.

Burak Tamaç, Program Coordinator

Burak Tamaç was born in Çanakkale, in the Northwestern part of Turkey. After growing up and finishing High School in Çanakkale, he went to Kocaeli University for a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Public Administration (2008) and İstanbul Bilgi University for a Master’s degree in International Relations (2010). He worked for the CIFE Summer Program at İstanbul Bilgi University and has travelled extensively throughout Turkey. He has been working for the SUI Center since the Fall of 2011.