İstanbul Bilgi University is a non-profit institution of higher education with over 20,000 students and 45,000 alumni, nearly 1,500 academicians; 7 faculties, 3 institutes, 4 schools, 3 vocational schools, and 150+ programs that provide education to its associate, undergraduate and graduate students. BILGI offers undergraduate and graduate programs in social sciences, economics, business, communications, arts, law, engineering and architecture. BILGI has several research centers and institutions specialized in youth studies, children studies, civil society studies, migration studies, sociology and education studies, and human rights studies. Academic members are globally well recognized in their respective areas and always active to conduct research projects supported by different national and international funding institutions. Since its establishment in 1996, BILGI is known for adopting an open-minded position in important social and political debates in Turkey. BILGI has had an active role during FP7 and H2020 programs. As of 2020, BILGI has 22 completed and 12 ongoing projects funded by the European Commission (5 of them are H2020, and 1 of them is ERC Advanced Grant).
Dr. Hasret Dikici Bilgin is an associate professor of political science at the department of International Relations, Istanbul Bilgi University. She studied international relations at the Middle East Technical University and received her PhD from Sabancı University in 2011. She is working on the class dynamics of Islamist politics. She has published extensively on political Islam, party politics and the political elite in the Middle East and Turkish politics most recently as book chapters as well as articles in Review of Middle East Studies, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, International Political Science Review, Parliamentary Affairs, and Turkish Studies. She carried out research in Turkey and Tunisia.