Keynote Speakers

PROF. DR. BURCU ÖZSOY

Gaziantep/Şahinbey – 1976, Ahmet, Nihal.
An academic who completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in the Department of Geodesy and Photogrammetry Engineering at Yıldız Technical University. She earned her doctorate from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), where her research focused on monitoring Antarctic and sea ice through satellite imagery. She is a faculty member at Istanbul Technical University's Maritime Faculty. She has conducted collaborative research with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and participated in the 2006–2007 Antarctic Science Expedition. She served as the founding director of ITU's Polar Research Application and Research Center (2015–2019). Since 2017, she has been the principal investigator of the National Polar Research Project, carried out under the auspices of the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye. In this capacity, she led the First, Second, and Third National Antarctic Expeditions as well as the 2019 First National Arctic Science Expedition, and has coordinated national Antarctic and Arctic expeditions since 2020. She provided expert review for an IPCC special report and has directed numerous national and international research projects. She currently serves as Director of the TÜBİTAK Polar Research Institute and President of TÜBİTAK MAM. She is the recipient of the TÜBA 2020 Young Scientist Award and serves as Vice President of SCAR. In 2025, she was appointed to the Presidential Council on Local Governance and Disaster Policies. Özsoy is proficient in English and is the mother of one child.

PROF. DR. PINAR ÜLGEN

Born in Elazığ in 1980, she completed her Master's thesis titled “Industry in Medieval Europe" in 2004, and her PhD dissertation titled “Technological Developments in the Near East and Europe between the 11th and 15th Centuries and Their Socio-Economic and Cultural Impacts" in 2008. In 2009, she began her academic career as an Assistant Professor at Gaziosmanpaşa University. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014 and to Full Professor in 2019. She is currently serving as a Professor at Gaziosmanpaşa University. The author has received numerous awards at international conferences. Among these are the Science and Arts Award (2011–2012), the Best Paper – Special Jury Award (2017), the Best Female Historian Award (2022), the Outstanding Achievement Award in European History (2023), the “Platinum Angel Award" for her work on women's history (2024), and the “Best Historian" Award in European History (2025). She has published numerous national and international articles in the fields of Medieval European history and comparative history. Her books include “Technology Transfer Between East and West in the Late Middle Ages," “Slavery in Medieval Europe," “Writings on Medieval History" (as editor and contributing author), “The Dance of Death in Medieval Europe," “Women and Witches," “Snapshots from the Middle Ages" (editor), “History of Medieval Europe," “Daily Life in Medieval Europe," and “Love, Passion, Intrigue, and Romance in Medieval Europe." She currently works as a faculty member in the Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Gaziosmanpaşa University, and has also taught courses at Istanbul Topkapı University and Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University. In addition to her academic work, she is proficient in English, Latin, French, and Italian, and has intermediate knowledge of German and Persian.

ASSOC. PROF. DR. ŞUAY NİLHAN AÇIKALIN

She is currently a faculty member in the Department of International Relations at Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University. Assoc. Prof. Açıkalın graduated from the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University in 2012. She completed her Master's degree at Middle East Technical University in 2015 with a thesis titled “Leadership in a Chaotic Environment: Angela Merkel and the Euro Crisis." She received her PhD from the same university in 2020 with a dissertation titled “Foreign Policy and Political Leadership: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Angela Merkel." As part of the Jean Monnet Scholarship Programme, she was a visiting researcher at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom and at Humboldt University of Berlin in Germany. She also served as a visiting fellow at Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Hungary. Her research interests include chaos and complexity theory, leadership, Turkish foreign policy, Turkey–EU relations, Turkey–China relations, women and girls in migration studies, climate change, as well as gastrodiplomacy and fashion diplomacy in both theoretical and practical contexts. She is the author of the book “Leader Diplomacy in Turkish–German Relations." She is a member of the advisory boards of the Union of Turkish Healthy Cities and the Center for Maritime Law Studies. She is also a founding member of the International Science Association and a member of the Bali Democracy Forum. In addition, she regularly gives interviews to national and international media outlets such as TRT World and Al Jazeera.