Forum

The Social Policy Forum is a research and policy centre founded at Boğaziçi University with the objective of generating critical knowledge pertaining to the main issues of social policy. The Forum aims to instigate and contribute to the debate on social policy and citizenship rights, carry the European experience and perspective on social policy and welfare reform to the Turkish context, and foster a deeper interest among intellectuals, policy-makers and media in social policy-making in Turkey.

Research
The Social Policy Forum conducts and supports academic research with a focus on the main issues of social policy in their social, economic and political significance including

poverty and social exclusion;
social assistance schemes;
social security systems;
health, education and other social services;
world of labour and changing roles of labour unions.

The Forum encourages scholars, particularly young scholars, from different disciplines to work on the above-mentioned issues or related ones, and it annually provides financial support to a number of graduate students working on their MA or Ph.D. theses in different areas of social policy. Comparative studies that attempt to place problems in Turkey in the context of European, especially South European, developments in welfare reform are of special interest to the overall research agenda of the Forum.

Policy
With a view to influence policy-making processes in the direction of a wider and stronger commitment to social rights in the area of welfare reform and labor market regulation, the Forum

. hosts workshops and seminars open to the academic community, policy-makers, NGO leaders and public intellectuals from Turkey and abroad;
. publishes occasional policy papers to share research results;
. holds occasional meetings with policy-makers as well as with journalists and other opinion makers in order to share new knowledge and influence the social policy agenda;
. hosts speaker series and invites academics, writers, film-makers addressing social issues from Europe and elsewhere to raise public opinion with regard to social policy issues;
. aims to build a network of scholars, researchers, policy-makers, activists working on social policy and welfare issues.

Institution
The Social Policy Forum is led by a Steering Committee composed of scholars from different disciplines. The Committee is chaired by Ayşe Buğra from the Department of Atatürk Institute at Boğaziçi University. Other members of the Committee are: Ayşe Öncü, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabancı University; Çağlar Keyder, Department of Sociology at Boğaziçi University; Gürol Irzık, Department of Philosophy at Boğaziçi University and Mine Eder, Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University.

The Social Policy Forum has an Advisory Committee composed of scholars, Trade Union and NGO representatives, writers, journalists who have done extensive and original thinking on social policy issues as well as on the problems of poverty and social exclusion in Turkey.

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