Horizon Europe Project with Özyeğin University Researchers Dr. Susan Rottman and Dr. Samarjit Ghosh Secures Research Grant

The multidisciplinary international project "OppAttune: Countering Oppositional Political Extremism through Attuned Dialogue – Track, Attune, Limit", in which Dr. Susan Beth Rottmann from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and Dr. Samarjit Ghosh from the Department of International Relations at Özyeğin University take part as researchers, has been awarded a grant of 3.16 million Euros from the European Commission's Horizon Europe Framework Program.

Scheduled to span from 2023 to 2026, the project is coordinated scientifically by The Open University (United Kingdom) and administratively by Glasgow Caledonian University (United Kingdom). The project will be jointly undertaken by 17 institutions from the European Union and its neighboring countries. Özyeğin University is one of the two academic partners in Turkey for this project. Other project partners include the American University of Paris (France), Malmö University (Sweden), Cultures Interactive (Germany), Oesterreichische Akademie Der Wissenschaften (Austria), Universita Ta Malta (Malta), Istanbul Bilgi University (Türkiye), Cyprus University (Cyprus), Institut Jozef Stefan (Slovenia), Universidade De Coimbra (Portugal), International Security Affairs Centre (Serbia), Kosovar Centre for Security Studies (Kosovo), Hammurabi Human Rights Organization (Iraq), and PRONI Center (Bosnia).

The "OppAttune" project will concentrate on scientific research methods to address the threat to the oppositional worldviews, narratives and dissensus within public debate which are all vital to a functioning democracy, due to extremism, as well as a lack of political and social dialogue. OppAttune will track, attune and limit extreme narratives to foreground EU transnational freedoms and multilateralism. The project is intended to develop new sustainable methods that will extend beyond current practices, such as graphing social behaviors to understand public decision-making processes or conducting surveys on public opinion.

The project team will conduct research on the development of extremist or anti-democratic thinking in everyday interactions, using immersive ethnography and participatory action research techniques. Additionally, the project also aims to create an interactive online self-test toolkit called "I-Attune," set to be made available on The Open University's OpenLearn platform in 2025 for a three-year trial period. This toolkit aims to prevent individuals from turning to extremist political movements by enabling constructive dialogues among them on various global political topics.

Further details about the project are available in the link below.
https://www.ozyegin.edu.tr/en/humanities-and-social-sciences/research/projects/oppattune-project