Köksal Avincan

Turkey | Batch 2021-2022

Thoughts on the programme: I firmly believe that the M.A. Human Rights programme at Friedrich–Alexander University (FAU) is the best academic environment to help me realize my goal of developing as a researcher. FAU’s distinguished faculty and excellent facilities suit my professional and future goals and provide a dynamic intellectual atmosphere. The flexible curriculum, which includes three different human rights disciplines (politics, philosophy, and law), will provide me with the broad-based education that I need to widen the scope of my knowledge and skills. In addition, the diversity of the student body will open my mind to innovative ideas and new avenues for human rights and their applications. 

Professional background: I graduated from Istanbul University, Turkey, in 2013. After I graduated from university, I received my Master’s degree at Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 2015. In the meantime, I served as a research assistant at the College of Education at Yildiz Technical University for about three years.

After I arrived in Germany, I  decided to pursue my academic career in human rights and have studied in the human rights area and had a fertile and collaborative academic experience. For instance, I served as an editorial assistant for a book project entitled Human Rights in Turkey: Assaults on Human Dignity and published a book chapter entitled Right to Education: Challenges and Issues Under the Justice and Development Party Era in this volume, which Springer published in December 2020.

In addition, I have published two manuscripts on human rights violations in Turkey in international peer-reviewed journals and have one under press. One article, Intellectual Crimes and Serious Violation of Human Rights in Turkey: A Narrative Inquiry, was published in The International Journal of Human Rights, one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals for human rights. The other article entitled ‘Am I a terrorist or an educator?’ Turkish asylum seekers’ narratives on education rights violations after a crackdown following the 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey was published in Globalisation, Societies and Education.

On a professional level, I have been working since 2019 as an editorial assistant for the Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies and the American Journal of Qualitative Research.