Overview

Mission of Ph.D. in Design, Technology and Society

Forging ahead with an unwavering traction in alignment with technological developments, today's market economy now goes beyond demanding, and downright forces technology to design more effective products, services, interactions, and environments. Although Turkey boasts a dynamic and rapidly developing market economy that is articulated to the global economy, it also has different advantages and disadvantages due to its very own, strong cultural and social dynamics in comparison to other countries with similar geographical, political, and economic characteristics.  In this conjuncture, as design and technology are nourished as much from cultural dynamics as from technological dynamics, one can easily say that they hold a great social and economic potential for research and application in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields in Turkey. The creation of original, differentiated research and ideas that will simultaneously contribute to different areas is only possible through the development of technological skills and culture based on design and technological infrastructure at urban, regional, and national scales, and a thorough understanding of this whole process as a creative, social practice within its cultural, economic, and political context.

Ph.D. Program in Design, Technology and Society aims to cultivate experts and researchers who can study the design and technological capabilities, which play increasingly more comprehensive roles in economic, social, technological, and cultural development of Turkey and similar countries and their local and national development, as a system and a social field of research and practice together with all its global and local elements, who are equipped with a robust theoretical knowledge-base which is essential for interdisciplinary studies, who are critical and multidimensional thinkers, innovative, observant about social and cultural dynamics required for the development of differentiated goods and services, and able to interpret design not only with its economic and commercial context but also with all its intellectual and political connections in order to contribute to the existing knowledge in the field.

With all these attributes, Ph.D. Program in Design, Technology and Society draws its strength from Özyeğin University’s (OzU) world-class entrepreneurial and innovative vision, employs and enhances current technologies, and sets itself apart from other doctoral programs in design in Turkey with its research-centered education philosophy which will be further developed in the light of social theories.  The program not only sees design, which is a creative social practice, as a culture-based technological trigger and actor interacting with technological, social, political, and economic elements, but also recognizes it as one of the constructive elements of material culture in which we exist. To that end, the Ph.D. Program in Design, Technology, and Society  will offer a comprehensive and nourishing platform of dialogue with its holistic education to researchers from different backgrounds and disciplines, in particular from Architecture, Fine Arts, Engineering, Economics and Administrative Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, Education, and Law. By bringing these disciplines together, the program will ultimately reveal new research opportunities, and facilitate the creation of high-level, international, original knowledge to further propel the rapid advancement of Turkey and other similar countries.