Transdisciplinary Senior Project

A non-exhaustive list of the past GE 400 topics 

Spring 2022

• An Assessment of the Implementation of International Conventions on Child Protection

• Effects of Recentralization and Europeanization in Turkey

• Gender Inequality in Sports and the Relationship between Social Gender Crisis and the Gender Wage Gap in Sports

• The Nexus between Online On-demand Delivery Platforms and Social Welfare

Fall 2021

• Implementation of Deposit Refund System in Ankara Province

• The Relationship between Political Regimes and Policies Regarding Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare in Middle-Income Trapped Countries

• The Collectivist Local Administration Experiences in Fatsa and Ovacık Regions

• A House of One’s Own: Housing Crisis of Young Adults in the Neoliberal Era in Turkey

• Ameliorating the Society: A Compact Refugee Integration System

Spring 2021

• Comparative Analysis of Effects of Technological Development on Women: Urban-Rural and Private-Public Divides

• Foreign Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa: An Issue of Efficacy

• The Impact of Urbanization on Gender Inequality in Turkey after 1950s

• Crowdwork: The Rise of Precarious Job and Reconstruction of Trade Unions

• The Relationship Between Competitive Authoritarianism and Violence Against Women

Fall 2020

• Educational opportunity inequality in Turkey and its consequences on general competitiveness of a Country

• Cryptocurrency: Why It Can't be a Fiat Currency 

• Turkish Soft Power in Africa: Somalia Case

• Environmental Problems  and  Energy Taxes, in Europe and in Turkey 

• Dani Rodric's Trilemma: Why is Democracy in Trouble in Europe? 

• Rising Authoritarianism: A System Level Analysis

• International Students Mobility: The Covid-19 Effect? 

• Distribution of Power Recalculated: Blue GDP, the US and China

• Fair or Not Fair: Coffee Trade in Ethiopia

• What are the impacts of leaders’ gender on administration of particular Sustainable Development Goals in light of the comparative analysis of New Zealand, Estonia and Denmark?

• Perception Towards Immigration: The United Kingdom, France and Spain in the European Refugee Crisis 

• What are the short-term effects of the Covid-19 on the European Union member states’ cooperation and trade relations

• UK, Germany, and Turkey in Terms of Economic Consequences and Identification of Public Reactions in Relation to the Measures Taken by the States

• Shadow Pandemic

• Political and Economic Consequences of Turkey's Insistence on Accessing Eastern Mediterranean Energy

• Violence Against Women in the Light of the İstanbul Convention

• Socio-economic effects of Covid-19

• When The Water Rises: Prospects, Challenges, and Strategies for Climate Migration in Turkey

• Opening the Finnish Arctic to Settlement

• Social Media Activism and Violence Against Women

• Global Politics of Waste and Plastic Waste Imports in Turkey

• Populism Differs in Latin American Countries

Fall 2019

• From 1999 to 2019: a Re-assessment of Turkey’s Readiness to a Massive Earthquake in İstanbul

• Propaganda by Intelligence Services via Social Media: An Analysis of the USA, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia

• Social Influence of R&D-Intensive Foreign Investment on Gender Equality

• Applicability and Sustainability of Modern City-States

• Comparative Analysis of Syrians’ Labour Market Integration and Working Conditions: Cases of Turkey and Germany

Spring 2019

• Migration of the 21st Century from Developing Countries to the USA:  Effects on the Host as well as Home Countries and Future Prospects related with their Labor Markets  

• Wealth Inequality in Developing Countries in the 21st Century: Turkish Case and Some Policy Analysis Comparatively with EU  

• The Impact of Syrian Refugees on the Turkish Women Labor Market Participants  

• Analysis of the Trends in Electoral Volatility in Turkey from 1990 till 2000’s

• To What Extent Anti-Smoking Campaigns Attain their Goals?  

• Can Mancur Olson’s Institutional Sclerosis, be implemented on developing economies? 

• Problems and Solutions Related with Anti – Biotic Consumption in Turkey

• Electric vehicles and sustainable development

• Territorialization of the Outer Space

• Income Inequality and Happiness

• Blockchain and Economic Development

• Water Scarcity and Armed Conflict

• Gender and Development: Swedish Feminist Foreign Policy 

• Can the Chinese social credit system offer an alternative framework for development?

• Do they walk like they talk? Populist parties and their election promises

• Democratic Socialist Municipalism: Mode of Production, Inclusion, and Leadership in Ovacık Municipality

• The Applicability of Norway Model to the UK after Brexit 

• The Effects of Swedish Feminist Foreign Policy on Gender Equality

• Turkey to Stay on Summer Time Permanently: A Wise Decision or Not?

• The Challenges and Prospects of being a YouTuber as a Micro-Celebrity & its contribution to Soft Power in Turkey

• Netflix: The New Era for the Television

• A Different Approach to Capitalism: Islamic Financial System

• Democratic Socialist Municipalism: Mode of Production, Inclusion, and Leadership in Ovacık Municipality

• Possible Effects of Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant on Turkish Energy Dependency

• The Inner Face of Solar Energy in Turkey

Fall 2018

• The Trade War between the United States and China

• Soft Power: A Brand-New Weapon

• Labor Rights as a way of development: the Intricate balance between unionization and Turkish policy legacies

• Transition from Liberal Economy to Nationalized Economy and the Effects on Growth and Development

• Turkish Space Agency: An Analysis of Developmental Prospects

• Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Income Inequality: Curse or Blessing?

Fall 2017

• Economic Miracle of South Korea: Investigation from the Cultural Perspective – 1945-1990

• The Impact of Transportation: Political, Economic and Socio-Cultural Dimensions

• Water, Development and Conflict: The Case of Israel and Its Desalination Policy

• The Impacts of Woman Labour Force on Turkey’s Development

• The Relationship between Revolution and Development in the Light of the Jasmine Revolution

• Female-headed Households: The Question of Women’s Empowerment

• The Erosion of Workers’ Rights and the Problem of Workers’ Safety in the Neoliberal Era in Turkey

• Female Domestic Workers Commuting Long-Distance to Wealthy Suburbs: Negotiations with Patriarchy

• The Dark Side of Neoliberalism: Slum Youth and Drugs

• Neoconservatism and Censorship in the Turkish Media: The Case of Shameless and Bizim Hikaye

• LGBTI Rights and Social Exclusion

• Feminization of Social Aid and Syrian Refugee Women: The Case of Önder Neighborhood, Altındağ, Ankara

• Voting Behavior and Political Representation

Detailed Syllabus

Supervisors

Content: M. Eray Yücel | eray@bilkent.edu.tr | Tue 15:30-17:20 (V-04), Fri 10:30-12:20 (V-04)

Language: Katherine Halley Willcox Özsarı | katherine.ozsari@bilkent.edu.tr | Wed 15:30-17:20 (G-Z07)

Course Description & Objectives

GE 400 Transdisciplinary Senior Project is a one-semester six-credit course offered to senior students of Economics, International Relations and Political Science and Public Administration Departments. It is designed to enhance students’ transferable skills in learning beyond their disciplinary boundaries and applying theoretical material to real life issues. Students taking GE 400 form groups of approximately five members from all three disciplines, and prepare a project that answers a chosen question under the supervision of their Instructors.

The course is jointly conducted by the Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences and the Faculty Academic English Program (FAE). While the FEASS component provides the students with fundamental social science research skills, the FAE component provides them with opportunity to learn, apply and develop the skills needed to outline, write, and present a research project.

Transdisciplinary project courses have proven to be valuable tools in preparing students for professional life. GE 400 is intended to do this by helping students to: (1) broaden their theoretical and empirical knowledge beyond disciplinary boundaries; (2) learn how to apply theoretical knowledge to ‘real world’ issues; (3) learn to communicate and cooperate across disciplines.

Course Activities

Students involve in the following activities of mandatory nature during GE 400:

1. Content supervision meetings (Content tutorials) with their Content Supervisor

2. Language supervision meetings (Language tutorials) with their Language Supervisor

3. Unsupervised Project Group meetings among themselves

4. Poster & Panel presentations

5. Other activities offered by their Content or Language Supervisors & the Guest Lectures on a section-basis

Section Autonomy

In GE 400, every section’s students constitute a separate grading-pool, i.e. they receive grades in comparison to their own classmates. So, except for the timing of official class hours and grade-bearing activities, each section’s Supervisors have complete autonomy to invent & re-organize the class activities.

Academic Integrity

One of the vital conditions for creating a productive and healthy academic environment is to conduct research without violating academic honesty. For the success of the course, plagiarism (representing another's work as one's own) is not to be tolerated. The use of somebody else’s ideas, viewpoints, findings or works in a paper, project report or a similar document which is presented as part of a course requirement, without proper acknowledgement of the source, can result in disciplinary action and ‘suspension’ from the University for one week to one semester. For more information about Bilkent University Academic Honesty Policy, see: http://www.provost.bilkent.edu.tr/procedures/AcademicHonesty.htm

Attendance & Punctuality

Students who do not attend 70% of the Content sessions (Class gatherings, Supervised group meetings, Presentations and Other activities) and/or 70% of the Language sessions (FAE class gatherings and Supervised group meetings) without an official excuse will be assigned an FZ grade. Students are to bear in mind that the 30% absenteeism allowance is 8 hours and this is to be used in case of unexpected health problems or other emergencies only.

Coming to class on time is mandatory, both for the benefit of a student and as a basic courtesy to the instructor and the other students.

Excused Absence

Late registering students, or students adding a course during the add/drop period, must visit Ayça Üner (G-164) to verify their legitimate late registration and notify their instructor, indicating the date when they registered. Students will be credited for the lessons missed prior to the date of registration only. Those adding or dropping a course will not be credited for attendance on other courses, and will need to be vigilant as to attendance for the remainder of the semester.

Students switching from one GE 400 section to another in the first week must have a signed note/email from their first instructor to present to their second instructor in order to be excused for those hours they missed in the second section.

Students involved in university organized activities, such as sports or cultural activities during lecture hours, may have their attendance credited if their instructor gets a notification via the STARS system. As decided by Bilkent University no student can miss more than 5 days for such activities. 

Language Tutorials

To utilize the Language sessions best, the students are responsible for submitting a complete draft, making a formal appointment and prioritizing the areas of the paper to discuss during the tutorial.

Turnitin

Students are required to submit their assignments to Turnitin no later than the due times noted.

Communications

Students will be mainly communicated via email by their Supervisors or the GE 400 Coordination Office.

Clauses Specific to Online Semesters – Whenever Applicable

To best serve the purposes of the course in the online-only mode of teaching, the following rulings/ principles/ rules will additionally apply. These are to override other rules set earlier in the Syllabus in case of conflicts. It is the students’ responsibility, academically and legally, to be informed and act accordingly.

·         Students will be joining the Zoom sessions from their homes (rather than from a public place like a café/restaurant) using a desktop/laptop computer (rather than a tablet/smart phone)

·         Students’ participation and appearance in Zoom gathering will maintain “camera on – microphone off” setting “at all times”: class gatherings, group meetings, common lectures, guest lectures, presentations. Regardless of its reason, absence of student’s video is to indicate/ signify student’s absence. Students’ user names in Zoom meetings will display as “Name Surname – Department – Student ID No”, like “John Doe – POLS – 21701234”. Aliases are not to be accepted.

·         As they will be contacted often via email by their Content Supervisors and Language Supervisors, students are expected to check and assumed to have checked their email inboxes frequently enough & they are expected to ensure their Bilkent-registered email accounts are functioning.

·         In the “online-only” mode, students’ access to computational software (ranging from spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel to dedicated statistical/econometric software like EViews, Stata, etc.) or text processors (like Microsoft Word) may turn out to be limited, as these are commercially-licensed. Under such circumstances, students are to use the available BCC facilities (labs) on-campus in their free study times, or substitute freeware applications for commercially licensed ones on their personal computers, with very limited loss in functionality, for instance LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Office, LaTEx instead of Microsoft Word and R & R-Studio, JASP, JMulti instead of EViews, Stata, Minitab.

·         A similar limitation may apply in the case of access to statistical data sources served/ bridged via Bilkent Library. Under such circumstances, students are to setup and use VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection provided by Bilkent Computer Center, so they will be able to remotely utilize the on-campus resources. 

Project Guidelines

I- Research Prospectus

A significant step in writing a research paper is deciding on your topic and your research question. This is not an easy task; it is one that requires a lot of a priori thinking. In order to complete the course, students are required to find a topic that touches on a real-world issue related to the three departments.

You can start this process by brain storming. Get together with your group members and try to come up with dynamics, events, issues, problems that you face in your everyday life. Socio-economic and political problems do not have to be out there. There are two key considerations. First, you must be interested in the subject; you and your teammates must be curious about the particular phenomenon that you want to study. Second, you must find a real-world puzzle that you can relate to the economic, social, and/or political framework you will be using.

Let your curiosity guide you. A good project asks a “how” question. How does this process work? How can we make sense of this phenomenon? How does x affect y? ‘How’ questions try to understand the inner dynamics of an event, process, or trend. This is essential for social sciences. We try to understand how things work and make that information relatable to the general publics. The answer to your questions can be causal, correlational, or descriptive.

Every prospectus should include a thesis statement or if you are to use quantitative techniques you should provide a hypothesis. A thesis statement is a sentence (or two) that explain the argument that will be presented in your project in clearest, simplest and most direct way possible. Your team must establish your argument based on your collective perspective on the issue you will be addressing.

Once you have established your topic (i.e. the focus of your project), your research question, your thesis statement, or your hypothesis, you need to write an abstract that explains: why this topic is important and how it relates to the socio-economic, and/or political issues covered in your GE 400 course. A good abstract should (1) provide a (very) brief background information in order to contextualize the topic; (2) establish the empirical case (an event, process, trend etc.) to be addressed in the project; (3) present the research question; (4) present the thesis statement or a hypothesis and (5) provide a brief description of the type of method that you will use in this project. General method lectures that you have related with GE 400 will help you here.

II- Draft Report

Mainly in the Draft Report your research question, especially your hypothesis is analyzed with a help of a literature review and data analysis. The Draft Report is supposed to present a decent literature review as well as your preliminary data analysis and preliminary findings. It could be a good practice to include the parts/sections of Abstract, Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Data, Results, Conclusion and Bibliography in your text. Still, as your project will be in progress as of the submission date of the Draft Report, Abstract, Introduction and Conclusion sections combined are better not to have a large volume, yet they should be well-placed in the text with backward and forward linkages, though.

II-a. Literature Review

A literature review is a survey of already published secondary sources. In an academic setting, secondary sources refer to journal articles, academic books, databases, surveys among others. Conducting a literature review presents an opportunity for you and your teammates to understand where your project fits in relation to the existing literature that is out there. As part of a literature review, you will try to demonstrate your grasp on the existing/current knowledge including substantive findings, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic. In other words, a good literature review will present a map of the existing literature on your chosen topic. To present a comprehensive literature review you must sometimes go back as far as 20 years or so.

In writing a literature review, you must try and answer some important questions: What do other authors argue? What are different perspectives on this issue? How do these perspectives compare and contrast? What are some sources of agreements and disagreements? Answering these questions will help you understand common arguments and consensuses/disagreements in your area of research. Consequently, your literature review will not be an annotated bibliography. It should clearly include a comparison of various trends and analysis of different ideas. Finally, you should conclude with why you are embracing some of these ideas and not others. In what ways these theories, ideas etc. cast light on your topic.

Literature review forms an important part of your research project. As part of writing a literature review, you must:

1) Identify the parameters of your research (time period, sectors, actors etc.) and base your searches on these.

2) Identify important academic books.

3) Identify main arguments in each source and write down how these arguments differ/overlap etc.

Once you “map” out the literature and identify methodological/theoretical/empirical debates, agreements, disagreements in the literature then you can start writing your literature review section. For FEASS GE 400 course, your literature review should be approximately 1,500 words long, and cover at least 30 sources with a lower limit of 5 sources per each of the fields of ECON, IR and POLS.

As part of the literature review, you must present the reader:

1) The fit: Where does your project fit in relation to the existing works that have already been published?

2) The gap: What is the gap in the literature that you will be addressing? What is new about your project when compared to other works? If you do not fill a gap in the literature, you may give a summary of your contributions to the area with your project.

3) The summary: What are some main theoretical, empirical, methodological issues addressed in the existing literature and why?

4) The analysis: Where do you agree/disagree with the existing works, and why? Which parts of the existing work will help you and guide you in your research?

5) The bibliography: You should provide a bibliography at the end of your Draft Project literature review. In bibliography, you should list the resources, obeying the numerical lower limits explained above, that you referred in the literature review.

Upon completing your literature review, you must have a good knowledge of what you are studying and what others’ have said about that topic. Knowing where you are is important; it allows you to chart your way forward.

II-b. Introduction

Now you are ready to form your introduction of your Draft Report. You should not cut and paste all your research proposal and all your literature review to form the introductory parts of your Draft Report. Instead, if you want to use this past assignment as the introductory parts of your Draft Report, you should summarize them neatly by removing the unnecessary parts and including the parts that you will address in your project.

The second important issue is you should not separate and detach the three disciplines from each other by making headings and subheadings, such as: Economics part or International Relations part or Political Science and Public Administration part. On the contrary your headings or subheadings should be carefully chosen such that you can intertwine these disciplines.

II-c. Data Collection and Analysis

So far you have determined a nicely framed research question, your thesis statement and completed a literature review to see where you are standing theoretically. Now you should test/demonstrate/prove your point. Actually, this is an open-ended journey. With another saying, while you try to prove your point, you may realize that your hypothesis might be wrong (or correct) at the end of your data analysis. This result should be welcomed by you and you should write your Draft Report accordingly.

Data Collection and Analysis require you and your teammates to reflect on the process of data collection (How did you collect the primary data? Did you collect the secondary data? Where did you get the secondary data?). This requires you to answer where/how did you find the data (through interviews, archives, internet databases, reports by government agencies, non-governmental organizations, international organization, surveys, archival research)?

What is Data?

Data (plural form of datum) refer to a set of inputs that are of qualitative or quantitative nature. In essence, data is quantifiable reality. Data allows you to test your thesis statement. As social scientists, we need proof to make the arguments we make and we cannot simply make unsubstantiated claims. In this pursuit, identifying, tracing, accessing, and sorting data is one of the major challenges faced by all of us. Sometime data is not available, not accessible, or simply does not exist. This might mean two things, either you are wrong in your assumptions – there is no data to back your argument, or you are the first to gather data on your particular topic. While the former can be frustrating and disappointing, the latter can be exciting and demanding.

Data Collection

Data collection refers to the process of gathering and measuring information to substantiate/prove/answer your stated research question/hypothesis. Researching economic, social, and political realities is a messy process. What counts as data, what are facts? Where to find them? How to acquire enough information to substantiate your claims? Acquiring your own primary data may be very valuable for a successful GE 400 project. ‘Primary data’ refers to data that you collect, or acquire from already established databases, to support your arguments. Primary data forms the basis of the ‘facts’ you will use to build your argument. On the other hand, if we look at the binding constraints, such as bureaucratic necessities and time span of the course, correct usage (i.e., having the data from scholarly articles by citing) of secondary data is permissible as well. A combination of primary and secondary data might be a wise policy. 

Successful completion of the abstract and the literature review may help you a lot in addressing your data needs. Before you start this process, keep one thing in mind: data is everywhere; all around us.

Primary data collection can be done through various methods: surveys, interviews, archival research, historical research, documentary research, polling, participant observation, database searches, among others helps you to collect data.

As part of the GE 400 course, you are expected to develop a research project that relies on primary data to some extent. So, you are supposed to go out into the ‘field’ and collect data first hand. ‘Going out to the field’ does not necessarily mean you need to go and do field research for days on end, rather it means that you need to get primary data from the original source of the data and not from other books or articles.

While data collection can be time consuming, challenging and at times frustrating, it is also extremely rewarding to see the real-world aspects of your project. Remember to be honest and ethical about this process. Do not manufacture data; do not change the result of your polls, surveys, interviews to fit the data into your argument. As a researcher it is your duty to reflect the ideas and views of others properly and without omissions.

Data Analysis

Collecting data, however, is only part of the process. You and your teammates need to analyze the data to make sense of all the information available. Data analysis requires you to inspect, transform, and model data in order to identify useful information and suggest conclusions. At this stage, the information you learned during your methods classes should help you. Consulting the following introductory methods textbooks may be useful:

• Della Porta, Donatella and Michael Keiting. (2008) Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences: A Pluralist Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Moses, Jonathon W. and Torbjorn L. Knutsen (2007) Ways of Knowing: Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan

As to data analysis, the content sessions will guide you through your project’s time span.

III- Final Report

After you have completed your Draft Report successfully, there is still some way ahead. As described earlier, the Draft Report (under the assumption of a standard student workload and tempo) is to include your in-depth review of the related literature and your preliminary data, analysis and findings. The Final Project, on the other hand, is supposed to polish and sharpen it in the light of your Supervisors’ criticisms. The polishing efforts are mainly aimed at:

• Completing the diagnostic checks/tests required by the methodology and correcting the work

• Completing the robustness analyses with respect to alternative data schemes and/or functional forms, where applicable, and dwelling on the power of the presented analysis

• Completing the missing links in the text of Draft Report so as to make it a “meaningful whole” without redundancies

• Completing the visual elements (tables and figures) so as to make them self-explanatory and fully compatible with the text

• Fulfilling each and every point required earlier by your Content Supervisor and Language Supervisor.

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