Who We Are

Founded in 1998 within Bilkent University’s Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, the Department of Communication and Design (COMD) has grown into one of Turkey’s most distinctive creative and research environments. We sit at the intersection of media theory, professional practice, and emerging technology.

Our faculty are researchers, filmmakers, sound designers, journalists, and scholars. They publish in top-tier international journals, master Dolby Atmos spatial audio and Dolby Vision, direct live symphony broadcasts, and produce media that reaches global audiences on platforms like MUBI and Netflix. Our graduates direct major international productions, win awards at festivals, and lead research at universities across North America and Europe.

COMD is a member of CILECT (the International Association of Film and Television Schools, 180+ institutions across 65 countries), ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association), and ELIA (European League of Institutes of the Arts, 280+ members across 52 countries).

We are a Creators Lab working closely with the industry.

 

What We Do

We call our graduates Thinker-Makers: professionals who can run the entire pipeline of a media project from initial concept to global distribution with both the technical precision to execute and the intellectual depth to lead.

The COMD curriculum operates as a dual-engine system, maintaining a strict 50/50 balance between studio practice and theoretical seminars. In the studio and theory classes, students master:

These tracks are not parallel, they are in constant conversation.

By the time a COMD student graduates, they have chosen between a rigorous capstone production project and a scholarly research thesis, and they have completed a critical theory sequence that places them alongside graduates of world-renowned university programmes.

 

Our Infrastructure

COMD Creators Lab: A multifunctional production complex housing several rare facilities under one roof. At its core is one of the world’s few educational Dolby Atmos and Vision suites, used for production courses, multi-camera training, professional-grade spatial audio work, and neuroscience research. The complex also includes a Media Archaeology Lab which is one of only five such facilities in the world dedicated to the study of obsolete technologies and their influence on contemporary digital culture, and a professional broadcast-grade Multi-camera Production Suite with linked control rooms, where students direct live Bilkent Symphony Orchestra concerts at full broadcast standard, a pedagogical asset found in very few media programmes globally.

Research: COMD operates an active research portfolio, led by Principal Investigators with TÜBİTAK 1001 awards, European COST Action memberships, and Eurostars co-funding. Faculty publish in Q1-ranked journals in political science, communication, and media studies, and are named as co-authors on neuroscience conference papers at the Vision Sciences Society and the Audio Engineering Society.

 

“We are a research department and a production department. The two aren’t in tension; they define each other.”