Graduate Students
Alexis Strang | UNC Alumni 2017 | Incoming UNC TAM MA Student
“I have been so pleased with my Turkish education at UNC because the program has integrated me into a supportive language and area studies community between UNC and Duke, connected me with like-minded students and academics, as well as opened many doors into Turkey and the world…”
Micah Hughes | Ph.D. Candidate | Religious Studies/Islamic Studies
Micah A. Hughes is a Ph.D. student in Religious Studies/Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. He completed his M.A. at the Alliance of Civilizations Institute in Istanbul, Turkey where he lived for three years. His research focuses on generational shifts in conservative political and religious thought in 20th-century Turkey, with special attention to issues of temporality and the international circulation of critical discourses. He tweets @MicahAHughes.
Devran Öcal | Ph.D. Candidate | Geography
Devran Koray Öcal is a PhD student in Geography at the University of North Carolina. His area of study includes cultural and political geography with a focus on geographies of religion, intimate geopolitics, transnationalism and diaspora studies. His current project engages with the alternative spaces and identity formations of the Turkish-Muslim diaspora in Germany.
Didem Türkoğlu | Ph.D. Candidate | Sociology
Didem Türkoğlu is a Ph.D. Candidate in sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously, she double majored in political science and history at Boğaziçi University, Turkey. She received MA degrees in Nationalism Studies (CEU), Modern Turkish History (Boğaziçi), and Sociology (UNC-CH).
Her research interests focus on social movements, political sociology, public policy, new media, culture, and comparative historical methods. She is currently working on her dissertation, titled “Who Gets to Have a Say in Higher Education, Who Is to Pay For It? : Neoliberal Reforms, Protest, and Opposition.” The project is a comparative analysis of higher education policies and tuition protests in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, with a special focus on England, Germany, Turkey, and the United States.
Emrah Yildiz | PostDoc Fellow | Sociology
Bio coming soon…