Dr. Karaagac is an interdisciplinary social scientist with research interests covering working lives, inequalities, gender, labour, and social reproduction. Her work is driven by a commitment to social justice through policy-relevant and interdisciplinary research. She adopts an ethnographic approach, using multiple qualitative and quantitative methods. In her research, she combines ethnography with critical policy analysis to explore how policies play on the ground, how they impact people’s lives, and how they could be improved to better serve people’s needs.
Here is a selection of research projects that Dr. Karaagac has been involved in:
Understanding how unprofessional behaviour in English NHS Trusts can be prevented and reduced: a mixed-methods study (University of Birmingham, PI: Jane Ferguson)
This research is led by Dr. Jane Ferguson at HSMC and funded by National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR163519). As part of the project team, Dr. Karaagac conducts realist research, including case studies, documentary analyses, meeting observations, and realist interviews across multiple NHS institutions. This mixed methods research explores approaches to reducing and preventing unprofessional behaviour within NHS workforce. The team investigates how organisational strategies, structures, cultures, incentives, and leadership styles influence such behaviour, aiming to generate findings that inform strategies to improve NHS staff wellbeing and workplace culture.
Making a Home in Off-Campus Housing: Bringing visibility to international student families through narratives of homespace (University of Waterloo, PI: Alkim Karaagac)
This project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Insight Development Grant, 2022–24). As the Principal Investigator, Dr. Karaagac leads a team of two research associates with co-investigator Dr Nancy Worth. The team examines the housing experiences of international students using mental sketch mapping and oral histories of homemaking and unmaking in transience. Partnering with the University of Waterloo Graduate Student Association, they contributed to their Affordable Housing Initiative and informed the Region of Waterloo’s Housing Programmes on the housing needs of newcomer students. For more information, please visit project website: makeahome.ca
International Student Indebtedness in Canada (Queen’s University, PI: Alkim Karaagac)
Dr. Karaagac’s postdoctoral fellowship at Queen’s University is funded by a competitive the Queen’s Research Opportunities Fund (QROF, 2022–24). The project involves (1) policy research mapping the mechanisms of the alternative student loans market in Canada and the United States; (2) narrative inquiry, through in-depth interviews to capture the experiences of indebted students from the Global South navigating precarious lives in Canadian universities. More about the project: Project website
In Debt to the State: Lived Experiences of Indebtedness in State-led Housing Projects in Istanbul(University of Waterloo, PI: Alkim Karaagac)
In her PhD research, Dr. Karaagac examined the lived experiences of indebtedness in state-led mass housing projects in Istanbul. She focused on state-led housing mobilisation programs for low-income groups, investigating everyday negotiations of finance and debt between the state’s Mass Housing Administration (TOKI), its local representatives, and low-income mass housing estate households. Through institutional ethnography, she illuminated how policy plays in the field, financializing affordable housing and redefining state-citizen relations as long-term creditor-debtor relations. This research generates fresh insights into theorising how neoliberal housing finance relies upon and reworks household reproductive capacities, gendered labour, and local networks of politics.
Home/Work: Understanding work-at-home freelancing in Toronto (University of Waterloo, PI: Nancy Worth)
During her PhD, Dr. Karaagac worked as a research associate on this SSHRC-funded project with Dr. Nancy Worth. This research engaged with concepts of freelancing, work at home, and precarious/flexible labour of the millennial generation. Dr. Karaagac interviewed Toronto freelance media workers and union representatives across Canada, during the Covid-19 pandemic, to reveal vulnerabilities freelance workers face in a highly casualised and monopolised media sector, tracing their complex narratives of how work and life intersect.
Counting Ourselves In: Understanding why women decide to engage with the media (University of Waterloo, PI: Nancy Worth)
This SSHRC-funded project (2017-2018) is a collaboration with the non-profit organisation, Informed Opinions, the mandate of which is to amplify women’s voices to bridge the gender gap in Canadian public discourse. The team explored what motivates women with professional and subject matter expertise to “count themselves in” by sharing their informed opinions and analysis with the broader public through the news media. They drew from a survey of Informed Opinions’ database of expert women (193/550 experts), and in-depth follow-up interviews (34 women). Click here for the project report Counting ourselves in: Understanding why women engage with the media.
Planning, Policy and People: Social and Economic Dimensions of the London 2012 Olympic Legacy Game(LSE, Cities Programme)
For her master’s at LSE, Dr. Karaagac involved in a multidisciplinary research studio addressing the socio-economic impacts of Olympic development in East London. The team focused on Leyton, a community affected by uneven development linked to the Olympic Village. They documented how Olympics-led gentrification around the Village was affecting local deprivation and social segregation and proposed a methodology of urban co-production through participatory spatial interventions that aimed to politically empower residents. She co-authored a chapter on this research in LSE Cities studio publication: Olympic Fringe (LSE, 2010).
From Shelter to Product: Comparative analysis of use and exchange value in Ankara 100. Yıl Workers Cooperative Housing(LSE, MSc City Design and Social Science)
In her master’s thesis, Dr. Karaagac conducted fieldwork in a cooperative housing estate in Ankara, where she was also a resident. As this working-class neighbourhood faced the threat of coercive urban renewal, she explored how residents negotiated the tension between the use and exchange values of their homes. Through in-depth interviews and socio-spatial analysis of shared spaces, she examined everyday urban practices to understand how value is produced and contested in contexts of housing transformation.