Seda Yuksel, a 2014 PhD graduate at the department has just been awarded CEU’s best dissertation award

Seda Yuksel, a 2014 PhD graduate at the department has just been awarded CEU’s best dissertation award as one of the three best thesis across the university.

In her doctoral research, Seda Yuksel investigated the processes of neoliberal restructuring in southeast Turkey through the lens of a two-year ethnographic research conducted in two cities. It explores the ways local economic elites attempt to reposition themselves and their cities through urban entrepreneurial regimes. The thesis is not only the result of an ethnographic research that was conducted under often difficult conditions in a region marked by war; Seda Yuksel’s work is also one of the pioneers not only in studies on Turkey but within the state rescaling and neoliberal urbanism debates.

The Best Dissertation Awards, which are given annually, are intended to recognize important scholarly contributions by graduate students. Dissertations from any discipline that are based on significant original research, raise thought-provoking questions in the field, and open up new perspectives are recognized through this award. The Doctoral Committee especially wants to reward imaginative research that takes an innovative approach in terms of the sources, the methodology and/or the research questions. Nominations of works that take a broadly understood comparative perspective and use an interdisciplinary approach are especially encouraged as well as those contributing to the understanding and practice of social justice.