Research Projects

Focused on the Hatay region, this initiative seeks to collaboratively design an urban development approach that integrates multi-risk awareness and engages diverse stakeholders to rebuild communities more resiliently.

This study will assess health equity and track resilience among Syrian refugees in Turkey, offering critical insights into their post-earthquake recovery process.

In September 2013, Columbia Global Center Istanbul, in collaboration with the| Amman Center, hosted the “Workshop on Geopolitical Developments and Press Freedoms in the Middle East and Turkey.” The event featured Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger, Professor Safwan M. Masri, Dean Steve Coll, former Dean Nicholas Lemann, and other global and regional experts.

In 2014, the Istanbul Center organized a training program for 24 media and journalism students from the region and the United States, centered on freedom of expression. Lectures were delivered by Professor Anya Schiffrin, Director of the International Media, Advocacy and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs, along with experts from ProPublica.

The Center also collaborates with Professor Susan E. McGregor from Columbia Journalism School on a project supported by the President’s Global Innovation Fund. This initiative includes research on the experiences of working journalists in Türkiye and a series of workshops and training sessions for journalists and citizen media practitioners, scheduled for 2016.

Through a collaborative research project with Professor Elazar Barkan, Director of Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR), and the Truth, Justice and Memory Studies Center (Hafıza Merkezi), the Istanbul Center has engaged scholars, civil society, and policymakers in discussions on historical dialogue, reconciliation, and the impact of past conflicts on contemporary society.

In 2013, the Center founded the Regional Network for Historical Dialogue and Dealing with the Past (RNHDP) to foster collaboration across the Caucasus and the Middle East. The Network has hosted events and workshops, drawing participation from 31 organizations across the region, focusing on historical dialogue, accountability, and reconciliation.

Key activities include the 2014 workshop on “Contested Sites and Historical Dialogue,” and the 2015 “Truth Telling and Encounters” workshop. In June 2015, the Center introduced the RNHDP Summer Training Program in Istanbul, offering seminars and workshops on historical dialogue and transitional justice, attracting participants from 11 countries.

Support for RNHDP has come from various foundations, including Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung Turkey, Open Society Foundations in Turkey, and Boğaziçi University’s Peace Education and Research Center.

The Politics of Memory in Global Context is a Franco-American collaborative project that unites scholars from the social sciences and humanities, cognitive scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and museum curators. The project examines collective and individual memory through a comparative global lens, aiming to identify commonalities, develop new analytical perspectives on public memory, and propose policies for better political management of divisive memories within and between countries. The project fosters interdisciplinary research through workshops and engages the public through lectures, as detailed on the project website: Politics of Memory.

In 2015, in collaboration with Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History, and Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia, the Istanbul and Amman Centers organized a series of interlinked workshops titled “Time and Trauma: Transgenerational Memories of Mass Suffering.” Held at Boğaziçi University and Studio-X Istanbul, these events brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, neuroscientists, psychologists, and museum curators from Asia, Türkiye, and the Middle East to explore the connections between individual and collective memory and the politics of national and transnational memory today.

From April 15 to May 17, 2015, Columbia Global Center Istanbul and the Consulate General of Greece in Istanbul hosted the “Blue Voyagers: The Art of Romare Bearden and Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu” exhibition. Co-curated by Robert O’Meally, Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and Merve İspahani, then a Doctoral Candidate in History at Columbia University, the exhibition marked the final stop of a global tour of African American artist Romare Bearden’s series based on Homer’s The Odyssey. This exhibit was part of a broader series of programs inspired by Bearden’s interpretation of Homer’s classic, central to Columbia’s undergraduate Core Curriculum.

In addition to Bearden’s “A Black Odyssey” series, the exhibition featured works by Turkish modernist Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, who, like Bearden, blended modern Western aesthetics with local themes. Both artists explored the concept of journey in their works, envisioning a “global odyssey” that drew on the legacies of ancient Greek civilization.

The exhibition included a panel discussion titled “Inviting the Other in - Translation, Adaptation, and Improvisation,” which examined connections between Bearden and Eyüboğlu and the challenges of translating their work across cultures. The exhibition concluded with a concert by Standard à la Turc, which reinterpreted various Turkish musical traditions with a jazz approach while honoring the essence of each piece.

“De-Provincializing Soft Power: A Global-Historical Approach” was a three-year research project that studied the power of cultural persuasion in foreign relations beyond the traditional Transatlantic and Western framework where the concept of “soft power” originated in the early 1990s. Led by Victoria De Grazia, Moore Collegiate Professor of History at Columbia, the project focused on the soft-power strategies of three emerging powers—Brazil, China, and Türkiye—that developed their own agendas in competition with the U.S., Europe, and each other.

In June 2015, Columbia Global Center Istanbul, in collaboration with the European Institute at Columbia University, organized an interdisciplinary academic workshop titled “De-Provincializing Soft Power: Perspectives from Türkiye.” The workshop brought together scholars and graduate students to examine Türkiye’s use of cultural persuasion in its recent international relations. This project was supported by the President’s Global Innovation Fund.

The Istanbul Research and Documentation Project was founded by Professor Holger A. Klein from Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology in November 2011 as a collaborative research initiative. The project aims to create a digital platform for the virtual presentation of Istanbul’s Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, and early Republican sites and monuments.

Since 2013, Professor Klein has taught a summer course at Boğaziçi University as part of the project. The Istanbul Research Institute and the Archaeological Museum are key partners in this initiative, which is supported by the President’s Global Innovation Fund.

REACH is a regional initiative by Columbia University aimed at improving health literacy and access to healthcare among refugee and local youth in urban areas through digital health technologies. Supported by Taiwan ICDF, Blue Chip Foundation, and Columbia University, the project is implemented in Türkiye, Lebanon, and Jordan with the collaboration of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia, Columbia Global Centers Istanbul and Amman, and several local partners, including Istanbul University, the American University of Beirut, and the German Jordanian University. The project involves stakeholder meetings, studies with urban youth, interviews with health providers and policymakers, and various communication activities such as exhibitions, panels, and policy briefings.

REACH works closely with refugee and local youth, software developers, health professionals, and NGOs to develop a trilingual mHealth application aimed at promoting health among young people and vulnerable populations. The project ultimately seeks to increase health literacy and improve healthcare access by disseminating the app more broadly in the region, assessing its effectiveness, and contributing to the evidence base on using digital health technologies for youth health promotion in forced migration settings.

Columbia Global Center Istanbul has concentrated its efforts on sustainable urbanization, a critical challenge for Istanbul and cities across the region. The Center has hosted several roundtables, bringing together global and local experts to discuss opportunities for advancing sustainability at the city level, particularly in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in September 2015.

In February 2015, the Center hosted Aromar Revi, Co-Chair of the UNSDSN Leadership Council and Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements. During his visit, Revi met with Istanbul's Mayor Kadir Topbaş and Sarıyer District officials. He also led a roundtable on “Sustainable Cities: Inclusive, Resilient, and Connected,” which gathered 35 urban experts, and delivered a public lecture titled “Can urban geographies create new histories?”

In November 2015, Revi returned to lead another roundtable at the Center on “Prospects for Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals: The Urban SDG and Implications for Istanbul.” Additionally, Stephen Karam from the World Bank presented the “Türkiye Urbanization Review” at a roundtable organized by the Center.

In 2015, Columbia Global Center Istanbul launched its second collaboration with the Mailman School of Public Health through the “Responding to Changing Health Needs in Complex Emergencies: A Policy Imperative” project, supported by a grant from Columbia University’s Global Policy Initiative. This three-year project focused on the health challenges faced by Syrian refugees in Türkiye, Jordan, and Lebanon, aiming to influence policy by highlighting the inadequacies of current refugee health frameworks and identifying opportunities to improve health services for displaced populations worldwide.

Led by Professors Wafaa El-Sadr, Miriam Rabkin, and Neil Boothby, the project involved a team of researchers from Türkiye, Jordan, Lebanon, and the United States, with key partnerships from the American University of Beirut and Columbia Global Centers in Istanbul and Amman. Initial groundwork included a series of meetings in Türkiye with public health officials and scholars, along with a public panel on adapting refugee health services for 21st-century challenges.

The project’s key event was a two-day workshop in Istanbul in October 2015, which brought together 80 specialists in refugee health from the region to discuss policy approaches and challenges. Following the workshop, the project team held discussions with key stakeholders in Ankara to explore potential policy implications.

Since 2013, Columbia Global Center Istanbul has prioritized sustainable development through its collaboration with Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). The SDSN, launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2012, aims to mobilize global expertise to promote sustainable development and implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Istanbul Center played a key role in establishing the Türkiye chapter of the SDSN, which unites universities, the private sector, civil society, and government to advance the sustainable development agenda in Türkiye. Hosted by Boğaziçi University, the network was officially launched at a conference in June 2014.

Our partnership with Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health began in 2013, following a visit by Dean Linda Fried and public health scholars. This visit led to the creation of the “Confronting Non-Communicable Diseases in the Middle East and Türkiye” project, funded by the President’s Global Innovation Fund. Led by Professors Wafaa El-Sadr and Miriam Rabkin, the project aims to set a research agenda on non-communicable diseases and foster regional collaborations.

The project kicked off with a conference at the Columbia Global Center Amman in January 2014, featuring regional experts, including leaders from the Istanbul Public Health Directorate and Koç University Medical School.

To deepen this collaboration, Turkish public health specialists were invited to attend the Epidemiology and Population Health Summer Institute in New York. Participants from the Istanbul Public Health Directorate, Koç University, and Marmara University took part, sharing their insights at an ICAP Seminar on “Changing Health Needs in the Middle East and Türkiye.”

The Istanbul Center actively works towards developing a global humanities program in collaboration with Columbia and its regional partners. In October 2015, the Center organized a roundtable meeting at Boğaziçi University with Sharon Marcus, Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Dean of Humanities at Columbia to discuss future prospects for designing an interdisciplinary global humanities curriculum to be executed with regularized faculty visits and student exchange programs between campuses.

During her visit, Professor Marcus also met with several distinguished scholars, publishers and editors and participated in a public panel, “Theater, Performance and Celebrity: An Archive of Extravagance.” Together with other colleagues, she examined how theater and performance contribute to the development of modern celebrity and how celebrity revitalizes theater and performance.

Leaders from cultural institutions, curators, practitioners and scholars explored factors influencing the arts and culture field in Istanbul, covering cultural policies, dynamics around public and private engagement in the arts, new forms of participation and issues around impact measurement in a “Global Think-In: Arts and Culture in Istanbul” led by Vishakha Desai, Senior Advisor for Global Affairs; Senior Research Scholar in Global Studies and Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs. After New York, Mumbai, and Rio, Istanbul is the fourth city to host the program, supported by the Ford Foundation and the Committee on Global Thought.

For more information, click here.

The Columbia Global Center Istanbul has prioritized gender studies through a close collaboration with the Center for the Study of Social Difference, particularly on the flagship global initiative Women Creating Change.

This collaboration began with a workshop titled “Rethinking Gender, Vulnerability, and Resistance,” held at the Istanbul Center in September 2013. Co-directed by Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature, and Professor Zeynep Gambetti of Boğaziçi University, the workshop brought together 15 leading feminist scholars from Türkiye and the surrounding region to explore critical concepts related to gender and resistance. During her time in Istanbul, Judith Butler also delivered a public lecture at Boğaziçi University titled “Freedom of Assembly, Or, Who are the People?” as part of the opening of the 13th Istanbul Biennial. Her lecture, attended by over 400 people, explored the relationship between freedom of assembly and freedom of expression, offering a nuanced discussion on the concept of the public and the body.

Following this, Columbia Global Center Istanbul partnered with the Women Mobilizing Memory working group, initiating a series of activities that connected scholars from Santiago, Istanbul, and New York. Beginning in 2013, this partnership facilitated four workshops across these cities, fostering transnational collaboration among participants. Additionally, graduate student members of the working group organized two seminars on campus, which included participation from graduate students in Türkiye, further strengthening academic ties and expanding the discourse on gender and memory across borders.