3rd Disability Studies Fall School
The 3rd Fall School for Disability Studies, organized by Boğaziçi University Social Policy Forum and Research Worldwide Istanbul in partnership with Lund University Raoul Wallenberg Institute, was carried out (online for the first time) between 1-11 September this year. The Fall School is an education program free of charge for graduate students enrolled in Turkish universities who conduct or are planning to conduct research in the field of disability studies. This year, the Fall School, which was carried out with a face-to-face education model in the past two years, was held by means of distance learning due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
This year, the Fall School has welcomed 24 graduate students; whereas 4 of them were male and 20 of them were female. The majority of the participants (17 people) continued their education at the master’s level, while the rest (7 people) were doctoral students. Apart from Istanbul and Ankara, the participants were from Adıyaman, Bartın, Eskişehir and Konya. The graduate programmes in which the participants were enrolled included labour economics and industrial relations, interior architecture, management, women's studies, public law, urban studies, special education, social work and sociology.
Apart from Volkan Yılmaz (Social Policy), Hande Sart (Educational Sciences) and Engin Yılmaz (GETEM and Barrier-Free Access Association) from Boğaziçi University, the following names are included in the teaching staff of the Fall School: Beyza Ünal (Specialist Clinical Psychologist and Association of Women with Disabilities), Dikmen Bezmez (Koç University, Sociology), Göksenin İnalhan (Istanbul Technical University, Architecture), İdil Işıl Gül (Istanbul Bilgi University, Law), Nurseli Yeşim Sünbüloğlu (Özyeğin University, Gender Equality Unit), Resa Aydın (İstanbul University, Medicine). Beyza Ünal, who was awarded the first Disability Studies Thesis Award in 2018 with her doctoral study completed at METU Clinical Psychology, delivered this year's opening lecture. Participants watched nine hours of video lectures as part of the Fall School and attended one-hour discussion sessions following each recorded lesson. In the last two days of the Fall School, the participants presented their research proposals and received feedback from the academic staff.
