SHORT CV

Upon graduating from Political Science and International Relations at Bosphorus University, Ceren has pursued a career in humanitarian aid since 2003. She has mostly worked with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in multiple forced displacement settings including Egypt, Ngara refugee camp in Tanzania, Van in Turkey , Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya, the Choucha refugee camp in Tunisia, South Sudan, Malaysia, the Director’s Office in Jordan for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and finally with Global Data Service in Denmark until July 2021. Throughout her work with UNHCR, Ceren has developed and implemented multiple digital engagement and knowledge management projects; participated in emergency responses; led the development of a core curriculum on statelessness in sub-regional mix-migratory contexts of South-East Asia, and worked on policy, communications, community of practice for data and knowledge, creative content development for advocacy campaigns and capacity building within different regional and global capacities.

Ceren is a hybrid theory/practitioner whose work engages the theory of digital media with a focus on the structure and power of narrative that interfaces with story elements (text, audio-visual) and mediators (visualisation, interface). She holds a master’s degree in Refugee Studies from the University of East London where her work on mediating binary identities in forced displacement settings through audio, visual, and textual forms was also exhibited in 2011. She completed her doctoral studies in Creative and Critical Practice in the School of Media, Arts, and Humanities at the University of Sussex in 2024. This practice-led doctoral research project (https://refugeedataminder.com) explores how digital media technologies, guided by the principles of digital humanities scholarship, can be utilised to identify and address the information gap between policy intentions of international refugee law and the lived experiences of forcibly displaced individuals through the use of data. Her academic practice is concerned with bringing the fields of digital media practices for development and social change, forced displacement, critical data, and human computer interaction into a cross-disciplinary conversation.