Supervision of Postgraduate Research in Literary Studies

Bilkent’s English Language and Literature department is not currently accepting doctoral students. However, I have served as lead and as secondary advisor on a number of PhD and MA theses by students at other universities in Ankara. I am happy to consider invitations to serve as an adviser on projects that fall within my areas of scholarly expertise, subject to the formal agreement of both Bilkent and the student’s home institution.

Most recently I acted as primary advisor to Pelin Doğan, who obtained her PhD from Ankara University in December 2017 with a thesis on ‘Censorship in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Drama: Representations and Responses’. I’m delighted to report that Pelin is now working as Assistant Professor at the Department of English Language and Literature at Munzur University in Tunceli, and her essay on censorship and the construction of the subject in John Marston’s The Malcontent was recently published in Freedom and Censorship in Early Modern English Literature, ed. Sophie Chiari (Routledge, 2019).

Supervision of Postgraduate Research in Education/TFL

In a previous career I taught English as a Foreign Language in Italy and in Scotland (at the University of Edinburgh), specialising in English for Academic Purposes. I have also taught Italian as a foreign language. I now regularly serve as a joint supervisor or jury member on MA TEFL theses in the Graduate School of Education, and enjoy these opportunities to stay in touch with the latest developments in Education and TFL scholarship. I am especially interested in projects relating to the teaching of literature in L2 contexts.

Current Supervision

Tunc, Güneş. (Expected defense date: January 2019). ‘Academic discourse socialization of English literature students through literature circles’. MA in Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) Thesis, Graduate School of Education, Bilkent University. In March 2018 we presented the preliminary findings of Güneş’s research at the Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in Chicago.

Thesis Committees

Kurt, S. (June, 2018). ‘Raising EFL learners’ awareness of suprasegmental features as an aid to understanding implicatures’. MA in Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) Thesis, Graduate School of Education, Bilkent University.

Mutlu, S. (May, 2015). ‘Nonnative teachers stepping into native teachers’ shoes’. MA in Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) Thesis, Graduate School of Education, Bilkent University.

Guven, S. (January, 2015). ‘EFL Learners’ Attitudes towards Learning Intercultural Communicative Competence’. MA in Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) Thesis, Graduate School of Education, Bilkent University.

Kullu, A. (July, 2014). ‘The Role of Native English Speaking Teachers in Promoting Intercultural Sensitivity’. MA in Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) Thesis, Graduate School of Education, Bilkent University.