2003 - Professor Sencer Ayata, Middle East Technical University

Sencer Ayata is the Chair of the Department of Sociology at Middle East Technical University, Ankara. With a BSc in Social Sciences from Middle East Technical University and a Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Anthropology from University of Kent, his main areas of interest are Urban Sociology, Political Sociology and Sociology of Religion. Since 1981, he has taught at the Department of Sociology of Middle East Technical University. He has also been visiting lecturer at the Universities of Manchester, Harvard, and the Wissenschaft Centrum, Berlin. Sencer Ayata is the author of several books and has published articles on a wide range of issues, including Sufism, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the politicisation of Islam, security problems, sociological aspects of globalisation, civil society, employment, and social democracy in Turkey. He contributed "Islam, Civil Society and the West") to the forthcoming The Future of Turkey's Foreign Policy (Dimitris Keridis and Lenore Martin eds., MIT Press). In 2000, he was involved in the World Bank Social Development Report on Community Basis of Poverty in Turkey, ''Social Inclusion and Poverty''.