Values for Cohesion team - University of Birmingham

Principal Investigator

Dr Aslı Kandemir is an interdisciplinary sociologist and the Principal Investigator of MHCLG-funded project titled Values for Cohesion: In the Shadow of Karagöz and Hacivat. Currently being part of Access to Success Pathways for Inclusive Research Excellence (ASPIRE) team at Birmingham Business School, she works on diversity, education policy, and community cohesion, with a particular interest in how values such as tolerance shape symbolic borders and social inclusion.

Aslı brings extensive experience in both academia and applied policy work, having previously managed EU-funded social projects, and contributed evidence to UK policymakers. Her work is grounded in advanced qualitative and arts-based methods, supported by quantitative research expertise. She was most recently part of the Leverhulme Trust-funded “FrEx” project exploring youth expression of race and faith in schools.

Aslı holds a PhD from Liverpool Hope University as a Vice Chancellor’s Scholar and multiple degrees in sociology, philosophy, education studies, and international relations. She continues to write, teach, and publish across sociology, education, and policy, and is currently authoring her first book, Tolerance and Symbolic Borders, to be published by Bristol University Press in 2026.

Research Team

Grace Sahota — PhDc in Education, University of Birmingham.
Duygu Doğuş Tandırcı is a PhD candidate in Education at the University of Birmingham, where she investigates how schools and educational policies respond to learner diversity, particularly in relation to special educational needs and high ability. Her work examines how students from varied socio-cultural backgrounds experience support systems, and how these systems can be strengthened to promote more equitable learning opportunities.

With a background in special education and a commitment to inclusive practice, Duygu’s research spans questions of ability, diversity, and educational access. She adopts mixed-methods approaches to explore how inclusive frameworks operate in real educational settings and how they might better recognise both advanced learning potential and additional support needs. Through this research, she aims to contribute to creating learning environments in which all students can thrive. Duygu currently works as a Research Assistant and assists the creative component and qualitative data analysis in the project.
Lara Tsentides has a BA in Digital Media and Communications and is a final year undergraduate student at the University of Birmingham. She has a keen interest in investigating human rights issues and contributing to positive societal change via the power of digital media and communication theories. Her experience includes collaborating with the barrister set, No.8 Chambers to assist appellants and witnesses undergoing the First-tier tribunal system via the creation of interactive digital content assets.

Lara’s educational background also includes engaging in a Summer abroad programme at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, where she studied Marketing and Communications through an intercultural lens. She continues to participate in active research to demystify harmful misconceptions that can be exacerbated through media misuse. Her research interests include, media policy and regulation, our understanding human rights in relation to digital media, the mishandling of AI, and social media content development and creation. Lara currently works as a Research Assistant and assists the creative component and qualitative data analysis in the project.
Mine Gülnur Samokhvalov — MA in Sociology-European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. Mine Gülnur Samokhvalov is a sociologist with a strong background in on immigration, race/ethnicity, and faith-based communities. She is one of the Research Assistants in the project titled Values for Cohesion: In the Shadow of Karagöz and Hacivat. She holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from Freie Universität Berlin and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Middle East Technical University. Her research interests include migration, transnational trajectories, and social inequalities, with experience in qualitative methods such as narrative and thematic analysis.
Mine has previously contributed to intercultural dialogue and inclusion-focused initiatives through NGOs and academic projects, and brings both research and applied project experience to her role.
Seckin Ozbek-MSc Applied Social Data Science, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Seckin Ozbek recently completed his studies in the Applied Social Data Science MSc programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science as a Chevening Scholar, following a BA in Economics from Ege University. His graduate training encompassed causal inference, applied machine learning, quantitative text analysis, and social network analysis, with applied work on instrumental variables, text classification, and machine learning-assisted survey respondent profiling for large social science datasets.
His dissertation, “Values in UN General Debate Speeches,” applies machine learning and natural language processing to classify leaders’ statements in terms of World Values Survey questions and assesses alignment with the popular opinions on values and UN Secretary-General’s value-based assertions, drawing on his professional experience in diplomacy spanning over 8 years to operationalise concepts such as the norm life cycle, norm clusters, and soft power from the perspective of political values.
James Sutton — PhDc in Education, University of Birmingham
Yıldız Uzun- is a PhD researcher at the UCL Knowledge Lab, where she investigates how students engage with learning analytics feedback to regulate their learning processes, and how generative AI can scaffold this engagement. Her research sits at the intersection of education, data, and emerging technologies, with a focus on making feedback more engaging and empowering learners to take ownership of their learning processes.
Yıldız brings a background in learning sciences and educational technology, with expertise in self-regulated learning, visualisation design, and human-AI interaction. Her work combines qualitative and quantitative approaches to explore how students interact with learning analytics systems and how generative AI as scaffold can foster more meaningful engagement with feedback.

Alongside her doctoral research, Yıldız contributes to Values for Cohesion: In the Shadow of Karagöz and Hacivat, supporting the project’s educational research and toolkit development aims. She is committed to advancing research that bridges theory and practice to create equitable, data-informed learning resources.