Working paper · In progress
The WISDOM Programme, Displaced Women in STEM, and the Peacebuilding Function of Higher Education
Osman Gültekin and Muhammad Ahmed Saadan Qasmani
Abstract
Higher education is routinely described as a route out of displacement, but the mechanism by which a scholarship becomes something more than material relief is rarely specified. This article examines the Women in Science Displacement Outreach Master's (WISDOM) Programme, a partnership between Istanbul Aydın University (IAU) and the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD), which has supported a cohort of displaced women in STEM master's programmes in Istanbul since September 2024. Drawing on a census survey of the full cohort (N = 13) and semi-structured interviews with [n] participants, the study uses a retrospective pre-post design to examine change across four domains: perceived structural barriers, academic self-efficacy, social and professional integration, and future orientation. Findings indicate [direction and magnitude to be inserted after analysis]. We argue that the programme's distinctive contribution is not access itself but the conversion of access into agency: participants moved from a survival horizon, in which education is instrumental to immediate security, toward a contribution horizon, in which education is instrumental to reconstruction of their countries of origin. We situate this within Türkiye's own history of absorbing displaced scholars, and argue that the 1933 University Reform offers both a precedent and a warning, since the women among those émigrés were largely written out of the record. The article maps the programme against the Sustainable Development Goals and proposes a replicable framework for gender-responsive scholarship design. Limitations arising from cohort size, self-report, and the authors' administrative relationship to the programme are addressed directly.
Keywords
- refugee higher education
- women in STEM
- displacement
- peacebuilding
- Sustainable Development Goals
- educational diplomacy
- Türkiye
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