Description

Turkey’s role in the global arena has expanded dramatically in the early 21st century and the Munk School has regularly sought to turn a spotlight in this direction in research and teaching activities. On October 8, the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies will be hosting a half-day workshop focusing on issues that clearly demonstrate the need to understand Turkish perspectives and experiences.

Two round table discussions will bring together visiting Turkish scholars and University of Toronto experts to consider “Turkey and the European Union” and “Turkey and the Arab Spring.”

Robert Clegg Austin (PhD University of Toronto) is a specialist on East Central and Southeastern Europe in historic and contemporary perspective. In the past, Dr. Austin was a Tirana-based correspondent of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; a Slovak-based correspondent with The Economist Group of Publications; and a news writer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto. Austin has written articles for The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Orbis, East European Politics and Societies and East European Quarterly along with numerous book chapters. He has lectured widely in Europe and North America. His book on Albania’s interwar experience is due out with the University of Toronto Press in October 2012.
(Professor Austin will participate in the round table discussion of “Turkey and the EU.”)

Randall Hansen is Director of the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs and Full Professor and Canada Research Chair in Immigration & Governance in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He works on Immigration and Citizenship, Demography and Population Policy and the Effects of War on Civilians. His published works include Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance after July 20, 1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), Sterilized by the State: Eugenics, Race and the Population Scare in 20th Century North America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), Fire and Fury: the Allied Bombing of Germany (Penguin, 2009), and Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain (Oxford University Press, 2000). He has also co-edited Immigration and Public Opinion in Liberal Democracies (with David Leal and Gary P. Freeman) (New York: Routledge, 2012), Migration States and International Cooperation (with Jeannette Money and Jobst Koehler, Routledge, 2011), Towards a European Nationality (w. P. Weil, Palgrave, 2001), Dual Nationality, Social Rights, and Federal Citizenship in the U.S. and Europe (w. P. Weil, Berghahn, 2002), and Immigration and asylum from 1900 to the present
He appears regularly on TVO’s The Agenda, and has written for and been quoted in the national and international press.
(Professor Hansen will participate in the round table discussion of “Turkey and the EU.”)

Jens Hanssen is an Associate Professor of Arab Civilization at the University of Toronto-Mississauga and modern Middle Eastern and Mediterranean History at the St. George Campus. He received his D.Phil in Modern History from Oxford University in 2001 and joined the University of Toronto the following year. His Dissertation has been published by Clarendon Press as Fin de Siècle Beirut, Oxford, 2005. He has authored two co-edited volumes: Empire in the City (Beirut, 2002); and History, Space and Social Conflict in Beirut (Beirut, 2005). He is finishing his translation of Butrus al-Bustani’s Nafir Suriyya (1860-1).
Jens has presented his work in English, German, Arabic, French and reads in Ottoman/Turkish and Spanish. He is interested in the connection between intellectual trends and urban culture in the modern Middle East, the rationalities of late Ottoman rule in the Arab provinces; imperialism, liberalism and cosmopolitanism in the modern Mediterranean. Parallel to is research on German, Jewish and Arab intellectual relations he is studying the Arab left. His writings have appeared in The New Cambridge History of Islam, Critical Inquiry, the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and www.hannaharendt.net – Zeitschrift für Politisches Denken. He is currently co-editing two volumes on modern Arab intellectual history to mark the 50th anniversary of Albert Hourani’s Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, and one volume on Contemporary Middle East and North African History in the OUP History Handbook Series.
(Professor Hanssen will participate in the round table discussion of “Turkey and the Arab Spring.”)

Ronald W. Pruessen is Deputy Director of Munk School of Global Affairs. Formerly Chair of the Department of History, his primary research and teaching interests are 20th century U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Early work focused on the Cold War (e.g., John Foster Dulles: To the Threshold, 1888-1952), but attention to both transatlantic relations and U.S.-China tensions has also generated interest in the historical roots of globalization. Current work is concentrated on two projects: one is a study of the early stages of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, using this as a window onto the over-arching question of how Great Powers make tragically problematic commitments; the other is an edited collection of articles and conference papers dealing with John Foster Dulles’s years as U.S. Secretary of States, 1953-59 (Dulles and the Global Management Impulse).
Recent publications include Fifty Years of Revolution: Perspectives on Cuba, the United States, and the World (co-edited with Soraya Castro [University of Havana]); “Shadows in Asia: John Foster Dulles and the Perpetual Failure of U.S. Development Policies,” in Comparativ: Zeitschrift fuer Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellscahftsforschung, Heft 4/2009; “A Globalization Moment: Franklin D. Roosevelt in Casablanca (January 1943) and the Development of ‘Development’ in U.S. Foreign Policy,” in Will Coleman, Stephen Streeter, and John Weaver, eds., Globalization and World History: Ruptures and Continuities (University of British Columbia Press, 2009).
(Professor Pruessen will participate in the round table discussion of “Turkey and the Arab Spring.”)

Mensur Akgün is the Director of the Global Political Trends Center (GPoT) and the Chair of the Department of International Relations at Istanbul Kültür University, where he is a faculty member. He received his first bachelor’s degree from Middle East Technical University in Ankara in international relations. He later earned another bachelor’s degree in social anthropology, as well as a master’s in political science, at the University of Oslo in Norway. He completed his doctoral studies at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. In addition to his work at GPoT, from 2002 to 2009 he served as the director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), to which he is currently an adviser. Previously a columnist at the daily Referans, Prof. Dr. Akgün currently writes for the daily Star. He has numerous published works in the fields of international relations and Turkish foreign policy. Since 2011, Prof. Dr. Akgün has been serving as an Adviser to the World Handicapped Foundation.

Saban Kardas works as an Associate Professor of international relations in the Department of International Relations at TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara. Dr Kardas also works as an advisor at Diplomacy Academy. He has published scholarly articles and book chapters on Turkish domestic and foreign policies, human rights, energy policies and international security and has been an occasional contributor to Turkish and international media. He is assistant editor to the quarterly journal Perceptions and writes analyses for the German Marshal Fund’s On Turkey series. He has taught classes at Diplomacy Academy, Turkish Military Academy, Sakarya University and other institutions. He received his doctoral degree in political science from the University of Utah. Dr Kardas also holds a master’s degree in international relations from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, and a second master’s degree in European Studies from the Center for European Integration Studies in Bonn, Germany.

Mesut Ozcan received his B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from Marmara University in 2000 and his M.A. in 2002 from the same institution. He defended his dissertation at the Boğaziçi University Atatürk Institute in 2007. He studied at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University on the Jean Monnet Master Scholarship in 2005-2006. He worked as a research assistant at Beykent University between 2000-2005. Özcan was a visiting scholar at Kuwait University’s Department of Political Science in 2009. He worked at Istanbul Ticaret University’s Department of International Relations as an Assistant Professor between 2007 and 2011. Dr. Özcan joined SAM of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as deputy chairman in September 2011. He is also an advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He has written three books: Sorunlu Miras Irak (Istanbul: Küre, 2003), Harmonizing Foreign Policy: Turkey, the EU and the Middle East (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), and Medeniyetler ve Dünya Düzen(ler)i, Mesut Ozcan ve Muzaffer Senel (ed), (Istanbul: Klasik, 2010). He has published articles and book chapters on Turkish Foreign Policy, Middle Eastern Politics and Iraq. He serves on the editorial boards of Insight Turkey, Divan and Perceptions.

Sylvia Tiryaki holds the position of the Vice-Chair of the International Relations Department of Istanbul Kültür University where she teaches courses on international law, introduction to law, human rights, history of political thought, and constitutional law. She completed her master’s and doctoral studies at the Faculty of Law of the Comenius University in Bratislava. In addition, she holds a PhD degree form the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences of the Comenius University. Dr. Tiryaki worked as a lawyer and became a member of the Slovak Bar Association in 2002. Between 2003 and 2008 she worked as the Cyprus project coordinator and a senior research fellow at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) Foreign Policy Program. Previously a regular columnist at the Turkish Daily News, Dr. Tiryaki writes for various national and international academic journals and newspapers. Her fields of expertise include Turkish foreign policy, Cyprus, the Middle East and North Africa, Armenia and the European Union. Dr. Tiryaki has been serving as an adviser to the World Handicapped Foundation since 2011 and has been on the Scientific Board of the World Disability Union since 2013.