Research at COMD brings academic inquiry and creative practice into dynamic conversation through Research Clusters that articulate shared questions of overlapping interests in specific fields of communication and design to create a framework fostering dialogue, co-creation, and collaboration. Research Clusters are where the COMD faculty and students meet to engage in interdisciplinary work across the social sciences, the humanities, and creative practices. They support collaboration in research via labs, facilities, exhibitions, festivals, and projects that allow students to gain direct opportunities to participate in faculty-led research and creative production.
Media Practices & Design
Faculty whose work is grounded in filmmaking, audiovisual production, sound, visual communication, interactive media, and design-led experimentation find home in the “Media Practices & Designer” cluster. It includes Andreas Treske, Boran Aksoy, Bülent Çaplı, Egemen Kırkağaç, Fulten Larlar, Jülide Akşıyote Görür, Melih Aydınat, Ufuk Önen, Wickham Catesby Flannagan, and Yusuf Akçura. Research and creative practice in this cluster move between studio production and reflective inquiry, spanning cinematography, video production, screenwriting, post-production, sound for visual and interactive media, interactive design, design thinking, glitch aesthetics, virtual reality, digital art history, and digital obsolescence.
Notable outputs include Andreas Treske’s filmmaking, interactive media works, books such as Video Theory and Heaven’s Delight: On the Pleasures of Audiovisual Practices, and his recent exhibition project For Want of (not) Measuring; Ufuk Önen’s long-running work in sound design and audio technologies, including more than fifty recorded releases, a landmark Turkish-language reference book on audio recording and music technologies, and current projects on Cloud-Based Interactive Simulation Application for Acoustics and Audio Technologies and Spatial Perception in Musical Auditory Scenes; and Wickham Flannagan’s ongoing editorial project “Do Not Enter,” a special collection of academic video essays on horror movie spaces. The cluster’s public-facing platforms include COMD EYE, the department’s annual end-of-year exhibition, which presents student work across short films, photography, video projects, design works, and interactive installations.
Society, Politics, and Communication
“Society, Politics, and Communication” cluster explores how media and communication shape public life, political processes, institutions, journalism, and social relations. The cluster brings together Ayşenur Dal, Burak Özçetin, Deniz Ergin Erbil, Emel Özdora, Emre Toros, Müge Mengü Hale, and Özen Baş, whose work spans political communication, digital media and democracy, public opinion, online political expression, journalism, organizational communication, public relations, advocacy, elections, trust, and media research methods. Faculty in this cluster combine qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches to questions of citizenship, participation, migration, polarization, crisis communication, and mediated publics.
The current profile of the cluster is reflected in projects such as Özen Baş’s TÜBİTAK-funded research, Rethinking Active Citizenship in the 100th Anniversary of the Republic: Political Participation and Citizen Interaction on Social Media in which Burak Özçetin acts as a researcher, and her co-authored articles published in top-ranked journals such as Social Media + Society and New Media & Society; Ayşenur Dal’s work on online political expression and digital privacy, including Firewalls Have Ears: How Horizontal Privacy Regulation Influences Online Political Expression in Russia published in International Journal of Communication and her co-authored 2025 special issue on science, polarization, and populism in International Journal of Public Opinion Research; Burak Özçetin’s ongoing TÜBİTAK projects and papers published in European Journal of Communication and European Journal of Cultural Studies with his books upcoming books A Century of Votes exploring the evolution of election campaigns in Turkey and An Intellectual History of the Idea of Communication: Between Philosophy and Sociology that delves into philosophy of communication, Emel Özdora’s refugee and migration-related research funded by the Arthur Page Center and the University of Chicago, along with her co-authored articles such as Managing Pandemic Communication Online: Turkish Ministry of Health’s Digital Communication Strategies during COVID-19 in International Journal of Communication; Emre Toros’s TÜBİTAK projects working as a consultant, researcher, and primary investigator in addition to his book Electoral Integrity in Turkey published by Edinburgh University Press; and Müge Mengü Hale’s editorial work on Bilkent Post, the department’s online multimedia magazine.
Histories, Theories, and Aesthetics of Media
The cluster approaches media through historical, theoretical, philosophical, and aesthetic inquiry. The faculty working within the cluster includes Andreas Treske, Colleen Kennedy-Karpat, Egemen Kırkağaç, Jülide Akşiyote Görür, Ruochen Bo, and Wickham Catesby Flannagan. Research in this cluster ranges from global new wave cinemas, film-philosophy, aesthetics, adaptation, nostalgia, photography, video-essays, design history, cultural heritage, digital art history, digital obsolescence, media archaeology, and the post-cinematic image.
Notable outputs of the cluster include Colleen Kennedy-Karpat’s publications on adaptation and film culture, including her chapter in Adaptation in Turkish Literature, Cinema, and Media, and her ongoing research on director Agnès Varda, which has produced several publications including Agnès Varda 1958: Three Short Films (in progress) and the co-edited volume The Sustainable Legacy of Agnès Varda; Andreas Treske’s continuing contributions to media theory and media art through Video Theory, Heaven’s Delight: On The Pleasures of Audiovisual Practices, and the exhibition project For Want to (not) Measuring; Ruochen Bo’s work in Film Quarterly and Film-Philosophy along with her ongoing project titled Aesthetic and Ethical Entanglements in Edward Yang’s Cinema; Jülide Akşiyote Görür’s ongoing work on comparative art and design education in the modern era.
Additionally, the cluster is materially anchored by the Media Archaeology Lab, which supports cross-disciplinary research and artistic practice through past media technologies. Also, You Made Me Watch That?!, a co-production of Bilkent COMD and Bilkent Cinema Society, is the department’s screen studies podcast co-hosted by Colleen Kennedy-Karpat and Wickham Flannagan, which brings critical discussion of cinema and screen culture to public audiences around the world.
