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Meet with our grad alumni
Berfin Acar
Berfin received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Middle East Technical University and her master’s degree from Sabanci University. In her master’s thesis, she investigated how majority group members perceive intergroup toleration and the contextual factors that play a role in this perception.
Her research interests include majority-minority relations, intragroup processes, collective action, social identity, intergroup toleration, and migration. She is currently doing her PhD at The Université libre de Bruxelles, under the supervision of Dr. Jasper Van Assche, aiming to unravel polarization and mobilization processes underlying intergroup tolerance and prejudice.
Zeynep Ecem Piyale
Zeynep's research interests are moral decision making, relational models of morality, moral emotions, intergroup tolerance and intergroup processes. Her research has appeared in academic journals such as Emotion, British Journal of Social Psychology, Personality and Individual Differences.
Ayşenur Didem Yılmaz
AyÅŸenur is pursuing her PhD at Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, with Prof. Loris Vezzali as her supervisor. She is interested in intergroup contact studies, especially online contact, as well as various social identity paradigm topics such as deprovincialization.
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She received her M.S. in Psychology from Sabanci University in 2023 and her B.S. in Psychology from Middle East Technical University in 2021.
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She reads fiction in her spare time. Although she has a tendency to favor the works of art within the classical & modern Turkish literature; she knows that the mind is unbounded and explores works form around the globe.
Faruk Tayyip Yalçın
Faruk is a social psychology PhD student at Penn State, specializing in empathy and moral psychology.
Aside from social psychology, he enjoys reading and talking about politics, philosophy of science, and statistical methods. He is into blogging and photography. He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Bilkent University in 2021.
Esra Kamacı
Esra received her undergraduate education in Psychology (2021) and Sociology (2022) from Istanbul University. During her undergraduate education, she took part in social development and bilingualism studies in different laboratories. She also conducted research on immigration and diaspora issues and took part in different NGO about migrant right.
Now she is doing her Master’s in Social Psychology at Ä°stanbul University. Her current research interests include moral psychology, perception of justice in children and political psychology. Besides her academic interests, she also enjoys taking care of her cats, growing her pencil collection and filling out a diary.
Duygu Yurt
Duygu received her bachelor’s degrees in Guidance and Psychological Counseling (2021) and Psychology (2022) from MEF University. During her undergraduate education, she took part in MEF’s social psychology laboratory as a research assistant and discovered her passion for intergroup relations. She received her master's degree in social psychology at Sabancı University in 2025. Her research interests include collective action and threat perceptions. Besides her academic interests, she enjoys watching movies and catching up with film festivals whenever possible.
Ä°rem Kuyucu
Ä°rem received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Bilkent University in 2021 and her master'S degree in Social Psychology from Sabancı University in 2025. During her master's, she worked on projects related to accent stigma and human-robot interaction. She started her PhD at University of Southern California in the fall of 2025. Her research interests include social cognition, applied linguistics, and intergroup communication. Besides her academic interests, she enjoys solo sports like kick-boxing and yoga; reading fiction books and traveling.
Selen Akay
Selen Akay completed her Master’s degree in psychology at Sabancı University in 2025. She received her Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Bilkent University, Turkey. Her research interests include but are not limited to intergroup discrimination, human-computer interactions, and blame attributions to artificial agents. Her academic goal is to promote healthy intergroup relationships through technology. She enjoys trying out new restaurants and likes to play board games with her friends in her free time.
