Özge Subașı on values, choices and care (CAL113, S6E7)

Geri: 00:00:05

Welcome to Changing Academic Life. I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick and this is a podcast series where academics and others share their stories, provide ideas and provoke discussions about what we can do individually and collectively to change academic life for the better. Do you ever think, you know someone well, because you've worked with them for a number of years. Well, that's what I thought when I invited Özge Subaşı onto the podcast. Özge and I worked together in Vienna from about 2010 to 2018. Özge is now in Istanbul in Turkey Or Türkiye in Turkish. And is the director of 'Futurewell: co-creation and wellbeing' group in the media and visual arts department at Koç University there. I thought it would be really interesting to talk to Özge about the challenges of trying to navigate academia and professional engagement, working in a different cultural context. And also with the particular travel and financial constraints in Turkey. But the conversation ended up being so much more. And I learned things about Özge that I never knew. Özge's story reflects a life of multiple relocations. Whether moving schools as a child. Or transitioning disciplines. Or navigating new countries and cultures. Özge describes this as "always coming from somewhere and not being in the system". Throughout all of this though Özge also demonstrates a really strong sense of personal core values. And the importance of holding true to them. And they're values like listening without pre-judgment. Fostering open communication. And bringing a deep care for the individual, the community, the environment, and so much more. And Özge gives us lots of practical examples of how these values influence research and teaching choices. As well as navigating the trade-offs. Particularly coming to the fore while completing an evaluation document. Özge also shares very openly about the challenges dealing with depression during the academic journey. And strategies for maintaining personal wellbeing. And we discussed the challenges faced by academics in Turkey. In particular, engaging with an international community. And specific issues related to international travel and visas and how students can be particularly impacted. So I hope you find this conversation as inspiring as I did. In seeing Özge's commitment to core values. To trying different ways of being an academic researcher. And to fostering an empathetic and inclusive work culture. Welcome Özge (Hi) And as full disclosure, we should just say that we did work together a number of years ago, so know each other well. And I just also had the pleasure of visiting with you in Turkey Can you set us up a little bit about your background?

Özge: 00:03:59

Yes, uh, I am Özge and I am working in the interaction design area with, um, a lot of diversity, inclusion, and justice, topics. And I have a background actually in the arts, more in, in industrial design, but more with artistic perspectives when people use design to tell, let's say artistic stories, and not necessarily to sell things. This is where I started. And, then I moved more and more to the human perspectives, and tried to combine it

Geri: 00:04:39

So what, how did that shift happen? Because, you know, when CV, it's very much industrial design for your bachelor's and master's. And. Design anthropology for your PhD. So that seems a shift into interaction design.

Özge: 00:04:57

Yes, actually, at the time I studied, like, back in the 90s, I don't remember even the, the interaction design word existed or not. I remember, maybe, who was it, in, in Atlanta, the ubiquitous word came just true. Um, it was, those times. And I did have an interest in understanding people and how I can bring it back to what I was trying to do, but there was no space. Just to give an example, in my bachelor's, I worked with blind and visually impaired children for a term where I spent really two or three days a week in a school with them. And, uh, while it started truly to, to build something that is helpful for them, like for their educational development. It turned out that I was learning more and more from them and I was more and more inspired from them. Um, but there was no space in my education back at that time. So I was doing some extra artistic courses in my Bachelor, but the project ended, uh, as a toy design for them

Geri: 00:06:08

mm

Özge: 00:06:10

But then I moved to, uh, to master's where I studied more of cultural studies and design anthropology and step by step and implemented them into my work and started doing more and more interventions were like, about performance on the street or a small exhibition on an unexpected space, things like that to, to see how I can use this design early skills to disrupt a little bit of these prejudgments. It all started more organically, basically.

Geri: 00:06:45

Yeah. And you can also see the red threads that I can see today, like the fact that in your bachelor's, the work with the blind and visually impaired students is something that seemed to. I don't know, energize you or you find important and when you introduce yourself, you talked about diversity, inclusion, and justice, and Yeah. They seem like really strong red threads through it all.

Özge: 00:07:14

Embarrassingly, the first time I, I was meeting with these students, these children, they were like seven to nine years old, maybe. I was expecting to give them something, like, because they're blind, they're visually impaired, and I can build something for them so that they can enjoy, you know. But then I realized that they were gossiping around things we are doing. Like, you know, the other students work, actually it's too easy, but they are just behaving as if it's fun. Things like, and then I started to dive into that world and understand that it's more, you know, they are children first, and then they have these differences.

Geri: 00:07:56

Hmm.

Özge: 00:07:56

And their word built on, like, their language built on it.

Geri: 00:08:00

Hmm. Well, that's interesting.

Özge: 00:08:03

So embarrassing, but good learning.

Geri: 00:08:06

good learning. Yeah. So after your PhD, you then worked in different projects, bringing more of this designerly perspective and more from the interaction design contribution?

Özge: 00:08:25

Now, CVs, I need to give this, opinion here, maybe. CVs are written in a certain way that makes things look successful. But I think a lot of things on my CV just came out of necessity. Like I wanted to do more artistic research and I applied to around 400 jobs as an internship

Geri: 00:08:51

how many did you say? 400?

Özge: 00:08:54

over a period of a year maybe. But it was like the answers were either we don't have any openings or. We would love to work with you, though we don't have any money. Um, and then, and I didn't have any money and I needed a job that would pay my rent basically. So, uh, around that time, my partner just told me, because he's also from software informatics, told me that, you know, there are people. People in the software and technology area, they're trying to do something similar to what you are looking for. Maybe look with these words. And then he gave me a kind of a book about user experience, or he suggested me the word and I found the book. And this is how I moved to this area, basically, because actually I needed a job, a visa,

Geri: 00:09:45

mm

Özge: 00:09:46

and I needed to keep going, but I also didn't want to leave the things that I want to proceed with. Um, yeah. And then the next step in my first job as a user researcher, user experience designer in a company where they were doing more research oriented projects, uh, people didn't want to take the projects like, that looked heavier, like, you know, caregivers for Alzheimer's disease or, you know, projects with, um, I don't know, cancer systems for several health issues, et cetera. I was like, I was maybe one of the people in the group who were like, Oh, give them to me. I love them type of thing. And it just, you know, I was there doing the thing I imagined. I remember my first week reading books about ethnography and how to put them into technology. And I was like, am I in a dream they're paying for this. Like, you know,

Geri: 00:10:51

It's, it's interesting, isn't it, the serendipitous ways that things happen and the ways you clearly identified with the strand of work. in this job that you took for pragmatic reasons of visa and just getting an income. And this was when you were living in Vienna. And still through that, even though it was more pragmatic, you were still able to find a path that you connected with and a contribution that you could really care about.

Özge: 00:11:24

that that is really how it, it went. And I sometimes when I look like, I always try to transfer these type of stories to my PhD students when they're super demoralised because you don't know what will happen next. Just, you know, stick with the values you have and do your best in the situation where you are more or less. And I'm still doing that, more or less that stayed with me.

Geri: 00:11:51

So what are the values that you have?

Özge: 00:11:53

Oh, it's hard to count when just, you know, say one, two, three. Um, but I think, uh, it's important to listen to more than talk to. And I think it's almost against the education I received. Because designers are educated in a way that, you know, that typical, um, wrong quotation from Harry Ford, if we ask them, they would ask for horses, etc. Um, and like all my work and say, success builds on listening, basically. And listening without prejudgments, maybe as much as, I mean, it's impossible because we are all biased, but, but like trying to listen, um, and then maybe care for like, not only for the self, but care for the environment, care for the others. I mean, if things do not come back to you as benefits, you still need to care. It's a fundamental thing in my group as well. Um, and then also, culturally I am raised in a. culture where things are more communal and collective than individual. And I see quite a lot. And then I lived in different countries more than 15 years, where individualistic values were much more prioritized. Um, and almost like, you know, pure collectivity was sometimes set aside. So I think collective values over individual values and collective goals, let's say. And then from there, we can, of course, always move to diversity inclusion

Geri: 00:13:53

Mm. Yeah.

Özge: 00:13:56

And also open communication. This is very important, like, really open, direct communication. And I'm more struggling now in Turkey about this than back in Austria, although it was another language and so on.

Geri: 00:14:12

Oh, can you say more about that? Because you eventually moved back to Turkey from living in Austria and you have a lab there. in the media and visual arts department that is called future well that we can come to in a tick and that's interesting that future well also reflects some of those values. So you're in Turkey and you said that the open communication and being direct is more challenging in Turkey.

Özge: 00:14:52

Yeah, The culture in Turkey builds a lot on indirect communication. Um, although, most of my colleagues here, as well as students, they come from more European and U. S. education systems. The culture is still there. People tend to not to say, sorry or I made a mistake. And really avoid it by silence this in return as a leader, uh, comes back to where you can also not say, uh, can we reconsider redoing this just because you see doesn't fit or something. It's just like, this was one of the earliest feedbacks from my students. Where they said, you know, they are not used to this type of communication, just because, they first perceived it as a power relation, whereas I was trying to build an open communication and a space for growth. This very much reflects one little anecdote here like my PhD students are very well connected to their jury members, because of the system we have here, and they have six monthly meetings where they present progress. And to be honest, their juries were a little bit, not aggressive, but like, you know, openly criticizing them so that they can learn at home. can make their mistakes at home. So, that when they are there in the job market, they know their weaknesses or et cetera. And then I was sending my students to other juries. And they were like, oh, you know, there was a big mistake about methodology and no one mentioned it, you know, this type of thing. Um, even in scientific,

Geri: 00:16:41

Were your juries more open? Were they not Turkish? Is that what you're saying?

Özge: 00:16:47

Maybe you know, a jury is made out of people and people we invited, and We had, thanks to, you know, lovely HCI community members like Angelica Strohmeyer, Sarah Fox, um, sitting in our juries, many more actually, Maria Menendez, Avsar Gürpınar, and so on. And they're all these people who are struggling with different things, and then they were really open about Um, the weaknesses, the

Geri: 00:17:16

Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Özge: 00:17:18

face, and and off the record at the end of each meeting. They were always like, Oh, it's a great growth. Uh, you know, congratulations, but it's just the last sentences.

Geri: 00:17:28

So it was the fact that they engaged openly and honestly with the realities of the work as they perceived it and the students aren't used to that culturally in that more direct, and took it more personally?

Özge: 00:17:45

In the beginning, yes, but after some juries seeing each others and, you know, seeing how it all goes like that, I think they cannot do otherwise now. They are more skeptical if I, you know, they write back to me like, uh, I don't see many revisions. Is it okay? Did you have a real chance to check it? So, you know, things change in time very, very easily. I also started implementing this, not implementing, but doing it more in the group because I took over department coordinatorship in the media and visual arts department. And this is much more senior people and, with their own interests, work cultures. But I try to communicate everything openly and like to everyone equally And I think this also creates some confusion from time to time, but now everybody is kind of okay with it. In the beginning, I think they were like, okay, what are you up to? Because it doesn't sound like the way we do it or the way it was done before. now everyone is happy because there is one document you can always go back and see what the decisions were made and why

Geri: 00:18:54

Mm.

Özge: 00:18:55

More transparency never harms, basically.

Geri: 00:18:57

Yeah. So you talked about building a space for growth, and that talks about time to, to do the building, and you're doing that with both your students and in your interactions with the other faculty in the department.

Özge: 00:19:13

I am trying but as you know, the universities, I think, wherever you are, they're not built in a way that, initiates this type of open discussions all the time, or, I mean, although that we say so, it's really hard, uh, within the systems of systems to try out these kind of things, because everything is more and more efficiency based and documented in a particular way. So it's really hard to keep this growth approach up to date. It's another effort, actually.

Geri: 00:19:48

It sort of reflects what you said about the CV, that the CV is a particular telling of the career that doesn't include the 400 applications that you send out or all the problems and there's a way in which the, um,

Özge: 00:20:03

Yeah.

Geri: 00:20:04

processes also have this sort of a sanitized view of how work gets done.

Özge: 00:20:10

Actually at the Futurewell page and we are not doing it very diligently nowadays, but we did in during the pandemic like we also recorded our rejections to the Futurewell CV, or we also recorded things like, you know, someone did a embroidery session in the city and enjoyed it or things like that, because we just thought, okay, if no one gives credit to that, we will give credit to that as a group. We will value that. And it actually brought us students. Who were more like, I saw you are doing this type of thing. And I actually didn't know this existed in this department or things like that. I met many students like that. So maybe they are just one or two percentage of all students, this doesn't mean that they're less valuable or their values are less relevant to the design or arts.

Geri: 00:21:08

I love that you're trying to give that visibility so that it's not just the sanitized, tick box, efficiency based version, because the rejections reflect work, don't they? And, running, a craft session in the city reflects work.

Özge: 00:21:27

Exactly. And it's also a lot about growth. You know, if you put things to journals, uh, that you know, or to conferences that you are co organizing, it's just, you know how it works. Maybe it says superfits. Uh, but for interdisciplinarity and for searching new areas to grow, um, usually you need to try and get rejected. People react to things that they don't know, and maybe it's a part of your role to push the boundaries a little bit more. Each time, and I should say, my life only benefited from that in the last 20 years. I mean, although it was really hard in the beginning, like all these rejections, I'm very happy that I attended design anthropology courses in Vienna. I'm very happy that I met my own boundaries, the wrong education sometimes that I received. I, I'm so happy to have faced that.

Geri: 00:22:31

Or what? Like what came outta that? Mm.

Özge: 00:22:37

I think I'm more like, I always ask the question to myself, why am I doing this? Is it like our very best, for instance, When we can measure and optimize every aspect of our health, is it like the very best thing to do or, the typical question like, who will take care of me when I'm old, for instance, um, I'm asking the question, would life be more fulfilling if we know. How we will be cared as we age, like daily care. And then when I really sit and think about these things and read things around these topics, I realized that it's not these certain answers or perfection. It's the way that goes to that place. And I think as designers, we need to take responsibility about how we design that path. Designers are more powerful in that sense, because it touches every day of every person, like there is no single day in an urban life, especially that you don't touch something designed. Basically. And so, you know, the new question of AI, and it was always like that, the new technologies, maybe we won't need design. Then I start questioning more and more. Okay, but like we're designing them, you know, because like the way they are designed, they actually shape our worlds. and then if we reflect on our own bias, and then if we as educators, as trainers, educate people in a way that they reflect on their bias, then we will end up with better designs eventually. I mean, it should happen like that because there will be less feminist activists visualized in AI with a mustache, for instance, like the less feminist activists from Turkey, you know, this, this is a story we just wrote some text to AI in the early days to figure out how it is perceived when there is a Turkish context to that. And all you receive is like, a lot of textiles. And if it's feminism, kind of a female looking bodies with moustache and, hair. I don't know why. So this is a product of bias thinking possibly.

Geri: 00:25:04

As you said, that's designed still, and not good.

Özge: 00:25:11

Actually, that thing, most of the things such like cultural differences, that they can be fixed. They can be easy fixes to them because they're not evil in, in, in, itself, it's just learned and you can unlearn them. But then, I think it was in June, I was listening to Sasha Costanza-Chock. And they were talking about, the necropolitics of technology, you know, when technology intendedly kills people. Like in the war situation or something like that. Who is responsible for that? Or what is the responsibility of the designer at that point? And if you start saying there is no responsibility because they were just programming, they were just designing, I'm not sure if you're standing on the right spot. We should question that and then we should really build our practices around that. The values I told like community values and like humanity values. Um, and then I think you won't find many designers who want to design for necropolitics.

Geri: 00:26:16

How do you reflect on having these values and having these concerns and to the extent in which academic culture that you are in, enables them or not, like, how does it fit?

Özge: 00:26:38

I want to take it from scratch here and reflect back to my re relocation experience, basically, because I think it connects back very well. Like, academia, can we call it academia, like the primary school, I don't know, but you know the education and the academia, let's say, never accepted my path. Because as a small child in primary school, I needed to change school and cities five times. So each year I studied back and forth between two schools. And it was the relocation experience and my teachers were accepting me, et cetera. You know, that there was no big trauma traumatized memories from that time. But imagine I'm, I was like 6-11 years old in this period. And relocating due to my mom's work situation

Geri: 00:27:32

Mm.

Özge: 00:27:33

Out of necessity, changing all the friends, et cetera, and struggling to get accepted by the system, by my friends, by my teacher. And then, I moved to another city to study. And then I moved to U. S. for a period, uh, and then moved back to Istanbul, another city I did, I was not living, uh, before then. And then I moved to Vienna. And throughout all these relocation experience, I don't remember a time, academic, non academic, or any other systems accepting my path, because I was always coming from somewhere, and I was not in the system. Um, and people were actually trying to help me fit into that system. You know, they were trying, oh, you know, you don't have this, but maybe we can solve this problem like that. And I think this adaptation gave me a specific understanding about academic expectations, how they are set. And how I can move in it. I think this comes from this relocation experience because I was a designer, I was an artist, like, you know, I had graduation certificates from artistic universities, and then I worked in technical areas.

Geri: 00:28:52

Mm.

Özge: 00:28:52

You know, all these things, they may seem seamless, but actually they are not. You know, the paperwork says you need an engineering graduation certificate in order to, I don't know, supervise a student or something like that. And thanks to many, many people who voluntarily helped me, who just took all these hundreds pages of documentation and then went through them to find that particular sentences that would help me. I think I learned how to move, and it also comes back to the academic expectations. Like, I am doing this yearly evaluations in my university, um, like I'm filling in these forms about expertises, and, and how well I did. And all I am doing is basically trying to fill in things I have done. In the wording, they ask for more or less.

Geri: 00:29:49

Mm.

Özge: 00:29:51

Of course, it just gives you a structure. Like, you need funding. You need publications at certain venues. You need good quality of teaching. But I'm not against them. They are not against my basic values. The problem is how you balance them. Like, one example is, like, when I first arrived here, I already was very experienced in, European projects and how to build projects, etc. But, and like pandemic just shortly after I came to Turkey, I realized that it will be a hard path to take a project and lead it in a system that I'm not familiar with where you need to circulate paperwork much more, etc. So I opted for smaller grants. I looked at what I have in hand. I already got funding for PhD students from the school. So I looked for travel money. And then I looked for material money and I skipped the human resource part and bigger projects, which comes with a lot of travels, which comes with a lot of documentation and reporting. Actually, it helped like this decision. Helped me cut maybe, I don't know, a lot of hours invested in it.

Geri: 00:31:11

Uh,

Özge: 00:31:12

So this

Geri: 00:31:12

a lot of hours in the admin overhead sort of management side and you use those hours instead to do?

Özge: 00:31:22

Uh, I used it more to build this culture, of collaborating with people, um, in the neighborhoods and open communication, setting more open design culture and also of course supporting my students in their work, and like more quality writing, free writing, like, because if you have a project, there are certain things you need to write in a particular area for a particular conference. And this is not always your favorite paper to write, but you need to write them too. So in my case, we were really working on papers. You know, literature reviews, even if they are not accepted, we were working on literature reviews, for a longer period. They were rejected, but like, it was fun to deeply engage with an area, without the pressure of delivering a report, delivering a particular paper and so on. And it was not many, many hours, but the hours invested into these readings instead of the hours invested into a report, a technical report.

Geri: 00:32:35

I love that this has been a very deliberate choice, like a strategic choice to say, this could give me a tick, a big tick, because, you know, a big funding, but the cost of getting that is not being able to do all these other things. And I see again reflected the values that you talked about before in terms of the open communication and the community aspects in what you're doing, and the care aspects in looking after your students. How are you, what's the trade off been though in doing that now that you're trying to write your evaluation document?

Özge: 00:33:18

The trade off as of course, big, uh, when it comes to, I don't know, promotions or, a space negotiation or, I don't know, things that comes to an end. where you need material things from others, especially from the leaders of your university, of your area, etc. But in return, I was able to, uh, serve in communities. I always wanted to serve like, you know, SIGCHI ethics community, accessibility, like, uh, community access SIGCHI. Um, and then I served as associate chair and in other roles in many conferences where. I really met friends online from time to time, like friends and colleagues, let's say, online and was able to exchange ideas. And this helped me stay on track throughout the years because like Turkey is a bit of disconnected. Um, I need three hours to the airport if I use public transport. And back in Vienna, it was like a 10 minute walk on an accessible pedestrian, uh, pathway and then a 12 minute train to the airport from my place. Um,

Geri: 00:34:41

to three hours.

Özge: 00:34:43

yeah, and then pandemic, of course, two years of pandemic in between, independent of that. So this gave me the opportunity to talk to people that I want to talk to. And to be a part of service roles that I want to be part of. And the trade off is the other things. But, I mean, academics do not always like to cite popular figures. But, there is this saying from Douglas Adams, Life is wasted on the living. Um, I love it. I mean, if you think through that, a bit deeply, you know, my choice brought me people and conversation, deep conversation, that I'm interested in. And it took away material things that I only need to proceed, with other things. They were intermediary. I didn't get a space, a proper space. So I opened my own office to my students as an office. It was not a big, big, you know, big, big, big thing for me.

Geri: 00:35:49

So you didn't get your own separate lab space, you

Özge: 00:35:53

Exactly. Exactly. Things like that. And, um, but it was not, I would do it the same way I did, basically, after six years. I'm not sorry about that.

Geri: 00:36:04

mm

Özge: 00:36:04

Um, and it just gave me a chance to think more about what do I need. But how, how I fit them into my reports now or yearly or five in five years. I don't. I report the things that I have made, and write really always openly about why they are relevant and why they are important. Um, and then if people in leadership do not believe in these things. I always try to give them examples and references from outside of Turkey, uh, or from other places than these leaders would find successful. And I'm just trying to open this type of communication more or less.

Geri: 00:36:54

Mm.

Özge: 00:36:56

Let's see how it turns out.

Geri: 00:37:00

I mean, in a lot of what you've talked about, you've always been trying to find ways of being true to you. Mm-Hmm.

Özge: 00:37:15

I think it's also, it comes back to a disability I own. Basically, I was diagnosed with depression, I don't know, some people call it disability, some not, but, uh, I claim it. Uh, and this was back when I was studying on my bachelors. And then, um, and after treatment, like medical treatment more. Uh, it came back when I was writing my PhD, and at that time, when, when you have something like this, they, if you are good enough, it's not that severe, they just can give you some tests to figure out how to deal with it, et cetera. And then I realized what, like towards the end of the treatment, second round of, you know, treatments with therapy. I realized that I can only act well. Uh, when I am true to my values, um, and then I said, I will prioritize my mental health, and just, you know, if it's the only way, then it's the only way. I think it just comes from there. It's not like, oh, you know, I have values and I implemented them, but it just comes from a personal study, uh, story to my opinion.

Geri: 00:38:37

What do you do to look after your mental health now?

Özge: 00:38:40

I do, what do I do? Um, I keep space between stressful things. Like, instead of planning stressful meetings on the same day, I put one meeting a day and then keep space for less stressful and more fun things things. as much as I can. I walk in the woods. It's a bit of a privilege of living very outside of the city. I walk, every day, at least 30 minutes. Cats are great in Istanbul for the mental health. Like, uh, you know, you can try to walk with a cat, all the time. And, and of course, I surround myself with people who understands me. I actually give this advice to many people. that you should work people, with people, whom you can get along with and prioritize this more than the topic. That's my understanding. Like rather than really jumping into every diversity inclusion topic that happens in the school and around me, I really work with people, uh, who are working on diverse topics, but we're really interested into building this forward. In a, say, in a less relevant area, like a high tech, a new high technology thing, augmented reality, I don't know, something like that, you know, or, hybrid type textiles, or things like that.

Geri: 00:40:12

So not being driven by playing the game in a way, but being driven by staying true to yourself.

Özge: 00:40:20

We're still playing the game.I mean, it's really hard to say, oh, I'm out of the game, by the way. It's, it's, it's impossible. Especially on my age where I still need to work another 20 years to my official retirement. So, I try to find potentials, like potential places within the game where it's pretty untouched and, maybe you can go in and try something different because no one is really interested in to. I mean, I, I take these kind of risks, let's say,

Geri: 00:40:56

Have you got an example?

Özge: 00:41:00

um, maybe for instance, things that I do with the city councils here in Istanbul, uh, we look into, look into topics where you cannot easily convert to money or technology or, you know, and I went to them just based on my interest. Um, but from this communication and from the initial more, um, let's say mainstream workshops we have done about accessibility of the city, is the city accessible to everyone, or is it safe for women? We moved to a communication where we can talk about, non human potentials of the city, what do we have, what about the green areas in the city, and like one of my students is working on this topic as a PhD, and it really organically grow from that collaborations, communications, tools we have used. So we didn't really build on accessibility issue and said, uh, okay, let's build an app that shows all the accessible spots in the city. But we went with this relationships and, um, tried things that were not in their agenda.

Geri: 00:42:24

Sounds good. Can I go back to the depression and during the PhD and writing that up? So you were working with us at that point, when you were writing up your PhD. Okay.

Özge: 00:42:44

writing a PhD was a long journey. And so I think it was before that. It was before that it was even before my job Before the university, I had a long period where I wrote my PhD and I'm writing a PhD in an art university. It's a very free space. I was not funded by my PhD, but I was doing research and teaching assistantship on different schools. Um, and it was that time, it came back and it, it used to do with many things, I think, because like, mental health can go really worse very easily. Actually, we don't realize that until it is at a certain stage that it can be diagnosed, more or less.

Geri: 00:43:37

yeah,

Özge: 00:43:38

Did you want to ask a particular thing?

Geri: 00:43:41

I think I was wanting to reflect on myself because I was head of the group that you were in and we were working together from 2000 10 basically until 18. And I never knew that, that you had a background with depression. And I just wonder, is there something that I could have done differently as leader of the group to make it okay to talk about or, you know, um, yeah, or just could I have done different things to support you.

Özge: 00:44:28

It was like the period before I was working at the university. And thank you, but I think you've done really well always, all the time. It's, it's nice to have someone who you can cry with, love with, and then work together. It's a very accommodating environment for, for someone like me. Um, I think the time I had that It was more of, um, a lot of things coming all together, including a kind of an asocializing. Uh, and at that time I was like, I said, loosely connected to work environments, loosely connected to school. I was not a student anymore, but not a part of a community as well. And I think, being relocated, dealing with all types of issues around that, all added up to that, together with the stress of, about your future, about your, um, family situation, that you cannot really help. You know, things pile up together, and if you are already a bit vulnerable in the beginning, it can easily get worse.

Geri: 00:45:39

Mm, Mm, Mm.

Özge: 00:45:45

And, um, and also like, um, having therapy in a language that you are on B2 level is not super helpful. It was the times where you wouldn't. receive help in Turkish, for instance, in, in Austria. I think it's different now, by the way. Um, and it's a good thing. And school support was really loose. Um, I remember, I don't know if it's any better. It's a slightly bit better at our place now, but still, you don't have one door, that you can knock when you're not feeling all right. You know, it's still. Um, and this is something that we, we do at Futurewell, by the way. You can just come over and have a cup of tea with us and we can just chat and we prioritize that.

Geri: 00:46:35

Mm.

Özge: 00:46:35

because I mean, half an hour of a tea drinking will not really make me less successful, I believe. Uh, yeah.

Geri: 00:46:45

So it's, it's not a big cost. So that connects nicely to what you've done in leading your own group, where you've set up this culture statement, for the group about how you look after wellbeing. Do you wanna talk about that a little bit more?

Özge: 00:47:05

Yes. Starting from the early times, for Futurewell, but also like maybe my time at IGW, uh, as well. I was more like,

Geri: 00:47:16

IGW, being the group that we worked in together, just for

Özge: 00:47:20

Uh, uh, yeah, I think I just realized that I was seeing. clearly that people were struggling. You know, it's, it's sometimes they even called my room, the dark room, to cry. Some people in the group, because it was at the end of the corridor. It's super disconnected. So if you go and cry there, no one apart from me will know about it. I don't know if it may, it was really, you know, extra inclusive or something, but I remember we joked about that. Um, so. I wanted to have the same thing in my group as well. It should be a place where people can openly talk about their problems, um, more than small chitchat, maybe even. Um, so we didn't hang anything on the door, but if you know it, um, You know it like if you just come to the room for another purpose and like you are a little bit shaking people first ask you to sit down and have a tea and then we will talk about whatever you want to ask a little bit later and people usually sit and after having their tea they they either tell or sit in silence. But you understand that they don't come to that room just because they want to ask for a signature or something. Sometimes, you know, there's more connection.

Geri: 00:48:43

Mm.

Özge: 00:48:45

Um, so, another thing was like to really reflect on things at the time. Like, when COVID came, for instance, uh, most people kept working. Like, they just moved to Zoom and kept working like before. And we said, okay. It will be hard times, because, you know, it sounds like it will be hard times. What about having a short check in every day, where we talk about just the day, and if people want to have questions, then they can. Want to ask questions, they can. And things like that. I cannot give a recipe for these kind of caring acts, uh, let's say. Um, but it's, it all reflected. to our teaching, for instance, later on, to more importantly, to our remedial exams, amnesty exams, you know, I don't know if you have them, but in Turkish culture, in Turkish system, if you fail a class, you can receive some extra exams. If you fail a couple of classes, but you are in the situation of graduation, you can, get, uh, other types of exams, just all at the same week, et cetera. And, these are like traditional exams and some people have. stress about this because the exams decide their future more or less if they can graduate or not. So I was just, building them differently. Like I was talking to students and giving them the option that they can submit in advance and if I, if they fail, they can resubmit a better version or because you cannot extend the deadline. The deadline is central But you can start earlier. Things like that. And, um, I think this accommodated a lot of people. A lot. I mean, I don't know, but at least this accommodated the people who were on our door and asking for help. I cannot say a lot of people, but it helped some people. Another thing is like, um, the physical access basically, If you cannot get physical access, you can actually, um, get collaborative access. If you don't have the opportunity to put a stairs to somewhere, You can have the person, yeah, hold them and have them jump or, you know, there are different types of access and it was a lot of understanding these things, learning and trying to accommodate. One, one, one simple thing is like, one of my colleagues with wheelchair, he told me that he cannot come to my room. And I didn't know why, because my room is just next to the elevator and it's one of the most accessible places. And later on he said, uh, because I have accumulated artistic stuff, stuff behind the door. The door is not fully opening. And I was like, you know, this is intersectional. My artistic practice and their material conflicts with this. Um, but you know, learning how to restructure your environment in a way, just putting just very small things, open communication allows you to correct them a little

Geri: 00:52:11

Mm.

Özge: 00:52:12

And, and grow your, um, empathy.

Geri: 00:52:15

Yeah.

Özge: 00:52:16

Because you start looking at where are the other things, where are the other doors that are not fully opening or, uh, or when I am working, with disabled students and they cannot find my room or the class where we are teaching, then you know that the, braille maps are not perfectly working. Because we have braille maps. Basically, we have great accessibility support in our campus. In contrary to common belief, uh, it's an awarded, like, accessibility awarded campus, basically. But still, it doesn't mean that people can use them easily, can find these maps easily, um, and things like that.

Geri: 00:52:56

Mm. Yeah. And, and more lovely examples of the way you enact care, you know, like you live out your care value on a day to day, both in how you engage in your teaching and using the space you have to innovate or interpret the central rules about deadlines, to support students and also just The openness to respond to students needs as they come up and to keep growing yourself. In just looking at wrapping up. Are there any things that we haven't talked about that you'd like to talk about or share while we're here? Are there any things about, I don't know, any particular sort of challenges around working in Turkey with, say the economic constraints there and trying to engage in an international community? Because you talked before, for example, about Participating in some online committees and professional service roles, and they sounded like they were roles that you could play out online, and I know that a lot of our communities also encourage, rely on, reward physical travel, for example.

Özge: 00:54:23

Uh that's a good point that we can talk about. I think there are a couple of things that many people whom you also talk with, who are not living in Europe or US, um, tell the same. There are differences. They are not necessarily weakness or strength, but there are different things. Like one issue is that doesn't apply to me, but that applies to my team members or my colleagues. Most of the time, the visa issue, for instance,

Geri: 00:54:52

Um, Uh, Um,

Özge: 00:54:52

It's not only the travel. I mean, most people would just say, okay, I will travel three hours and it's a bit of a harder task than 20 minutes. Though, if you're living in Turkey, And we work on a very sharp political climate. We struggle, and in Istanbul we struggle, with megacity problems and in comparison, like, you know, commute to the airport is a fun activity you would do for three hours. It's not the problem. But then the visa issue, like the low acceptance of visas, for instance, currently in Europe, Was a big deal for us because like two of my students on two different times were rejected with an accepted conference paper. And this can be end of their career. They're PhD students and we barely put the money together as a, um, research group, um, they got funding from the conference organizers, for instance, thanks to everyone who supported this type of travel funding, because we really, I mean, we couldn't pay anything about, you know, about the entrance fees, et cetera. Another point, but then the visa costs, they, their families take care of it and sometimes our graduate school, of course, and then the visa is rejected. Think about the monetary aspect, the effort they put in and the irrelevance of such a paperwork to their life. PhDs or to their paper writing. And then they really need to deal with on a daily basis. This means even if their visas are approved, they can only book on very last minute flights, which is much more expensive. They can only book in a hotel on the very last days, which means they usually live outside and cannot really be part of the cultural activities. This is a huge, huge burden for us. All the time. I said my students and my team. Um, were lucky and travel funding. But if you don't have travel funding, I mean, they have a bit of a budget here, but like the expectation of interaction design area of publishing, it's just really a lot. And if they want postdoc positions, they need to publish, they need to be present, they need to attend the workshops to make friends. Um, and it's impossible because like, you know, Euro versus Turkish Lira. The money that we get as salaries or as support, it just like melts so easily. it's impossible to keep pace with that as well. Um, for me, the most, most challenging thing, but not a big, big challenge in comparison to two things that I mentioned is usually the time zones. Like when you have service meetings, of course, people want to have them towards the end of their day, like as a last thing. So end of your day at five o'clock or 4. 30 in Europe is my dinner more or less.

Geri: 00:58:10

Mm,

Özge: 00:58:11

Um, but I mean, people were so accommodating. For instance, Stacey Branham and Sarah Volks. I mean, they wanted to take 6am in the morning sometimes so that our students are not presenting in the middle of the night or, you know, and I just really, I, I was so taken care of. I couldn't really say, uh, it was a big problem, but in general, let's say

Geri: 00:58:34

yeah.

Özge: 00:58:35

that people need to take care of more or

Geri: 00:58:38

Mm,

Özge: 00:58:39

Uh, and, of course my university and other universities in Turkey who are struggling for success. Um, they are evaluated with U. S. systems, like, they are competing for the same ranking as the U. S. schools. And this puts a pressure on everything that they do. Um, everything has to be a kind of a U. S. like, for instance, me being evaluated by 12 international professors to keep my position, or, you know, and then each professor in tenure track has the same. And think about the amount of service work the deans have to do, the coordinator has to do, coordinators has to do, and the number of letters the international people need to write. So these type of things. Um, I think that I cannot change, but I'm looking and observing them closely and try to find potential to, to raise voice maybe because they don't seem very fitting and uh, and accommodating. But on the other hand, I don't have any other solution because like it comes from a global system. They try to be like, my university is in top 500. Um, in, and it's a research one university with a lot of ERC grants, and this is a huge success for a university from Turkey, with all the struggles piling together. Um, so they are trying to keep their space, I mean, uh, keep their spot and they're playing the game and it reflects back to us more or less.

Geri: 01:00:22

mm,

Özge: 01:00:23

This is a lot of things. And one last thing. I want to see more people traveling to Turkey. That would be nice. I think none of the major conferences were held in Turkey, and people were not that frequently. I mean, our department is, uh, having guest speakers every year, international guest speakers. Um, but. The more people invest into other countries, not only Turkey, the more connected we are, and then the less biased, the less biased everyone is, like, you know. So that the less tension we have across countries and I think this can only help having a more inclusive, uh, interaction design area. I don't know

Geri: 01:01:14

And it's, it's growing the empathy that you talked about before, isn't it, in, in doing that?

Özge: 01:01:21

exactly, I mean, just commuting three hours from the airport helps understanding why you don't, why the other person is just a bit not wishing to travel that frequently.

Geri: 01:01:31

Yeah. Yeah. So I know that being in Vienna, I can pop up to Denmark for a meeting for the day and come back the same day because as you said, the app was really accessible and that's just not an option you have. Yeah.

Özge: 01:01:48

no, just, uh, yeah, but it's cutting travel. Cutting travel is a learning as well.

Geri: 01:01:56

And, well, uh, yes, and cutting travel is a learning. So there's some ways in which maybe the increasing emphasis on sustainability and the increasing critical reflection we're seeing around the amount of academic travel, and whether that's a good thing or not, can also be an inclusive measure that may result in other initiatives that could help countries where it is a little bit more difficult to travel from.

Özge: 01:02:22

Um,

Geri: 01:02:23

Yeah, Özge we should wrap up and thank you so much for giving me this time and just for sharing your perspectives and I really appreciate you and your commitment to staying true to who you are and really navigating that path through and making it work and even where there are trade offs, you know, you, you articulated those trade offs in a way that were constructive still. And, you show an example of how you can make those trade offs and still feel good, and still make them work.

Özge: 01:03:06

I think, I should thank to you and people like you, uh, who are trying to open these conversations to public, who are trying to accommodate them all the time. Because I think this gave me the power to look into the dark and weak sides of things. Um, just an accommodating environment and community really helps to reflect. On these things, so if it's a success, it's a collaborative one, for

Geri: 01:03:37

and we're all part of that community in creating that space for one another. So thank you, and it's good.

Özge: 01:03:45

Thank you.

Geri: 01:03:49

You can find the summary notes, a transcript, and related links for this podcast on www. changingacademiclife. com. You can also subscribe to Changing Academic Life on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. And I'm really hoping that we can widen the conversation about how we can do academia differently. And you can contribute to this by rating the podcast and also giving feedback. And if something connected with you, please consider sharing this podcast with your colleagues together. We can make change happen.