The Digital Polis: Youth Civic Engagement in the Reddit Sphere
Co-led with Julian Canjura and advised by Dr. Robert Schrauf, this ongoing project explores how young people perceive and perform civic and political engagement in digital spaces, with Reddit as a primary site of inquiry. Rather than treating online engagement as symbolic or secondary to “real” politics, we examine how Reddit users aged 18–25 develop civic subjectivities through everyday platform interactions. Drawing on a mixed-methods design (including surveys, Reddit activity analysis, and in-depth interviews with a stimulated recall protocol) we analyze how users understand their own political efficacy, emotional responses, and ideological positioning. Grounded in discourse analysis and political theory, this study treats Reddit as a pedagogical space—a digital polis—where political identities, affects, and orientations are shaped. This project is supported by a $3,650 research grant from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State and contributes to broader conversations in civic engagement, social media discourse, and the political formation of youth in the digital age.
İngilizce Öğretmenleri İçin Travma İle Bilgilendirilmiş Eğitim Çalıştayı: Okullarda Deprem Travmasıyla Mücadele (Trauma-informed Education Workshop for English Teachers: Navigating Earthquake Trauma at School)
In response to the devastating 2023 earthquakes in Turkey, I co-designed and facilitated a trauma-informed pedagogy workshop for English teachers in Adıyaman, one of the majorly affected cities, in June 2023. Developed collaboratively with local educators and psychologists, the workshop aimed to support teachers coping with collective trauma while equipping them with pedagogical strategies to hold space for their students' grief, fear, and uncertainty. The workshop foregrounded affective labor, local knowledge, and linguistic inclusion, and reflects my broader commitment to care-driven, community-centered approaches to education and teacher empowerment.
Meeting Halfway: Strategies for Native English Speakers in Communication with Non-Native Speakers
This project was conducted by the 2022 PhD cohort in Applied Linguistics at Penn State—Merve Özçelik, Julian Canjura, Xiaozheng Dai, Pedro Augusto de Lima Bastos, and Mfundo Jabulani Msimango. Funded by a $500 grant from the Graduate Alliance for Diversity and Inclusion (GADI), we produced a five-video series that promotes linguistic diversity, equity, and justice. The series offers practical strategies to help native English speakers take greater responsibility in multilingual conversations, which is an often-overlooked element in language equity. By emphasizing how power operates through language, the project aims to shift communicative responsibility, empower non-dominant speakers, and reframe what “effective” communication really means.