UW Study Abroad · Draft Program · Winter 2028

Computing Power and Political Power

Technology, Inequality, and Resistance in Turkey

Istanbul, with an Izmir / Ephesus excursion Jan 3 – Mar 10, 2028 3 courses · up to 15 credits ~20 students

This program is still in development. The syllabi, schedule, and partnership details on this site are working drafts prepared by the faculty directors. Nothing here is final until it has been reviewed by both instructors and confirmed by UW Study Abroad.

Program Overview

Turkey combines an advanced technology sector, one of the world's most comprehensive e-government systems, and a deep, well-documented archive of economic and political history. This program uses that setting to teach computing and political science together, not side by side. Around twenty students, drawn from both fields, spend a winter quarter in Istanbul, each co-taught by a computer scientist and a political scientist, each pairing a technical skill with a political-economic question. Students can take one, two, or all three courses; 15 credits (all three) is the maximum.

The Three Courses

One quarter, run in lockstep

Course 1

The Technology of Resistance

Internet censorship, circumvention, and networked collective action, using Turkey's documented history of information control as the case study.

Draft syllabus

Course 2

Computational Political Economy of Turkey

The political economy of inequality taught hands-on: OCR, geocoding, and choropleth mapping applied to Ottoman and Republican-era records.

Draft syllabus

Course 3

Fieldwork Practicum

The integrative course: mixed technical / political-science teams carry a single applied project from question to public presentation.

Draft syllabus

Location

Based in Istanbul

The program is based in Istanbul. We're in talks with Sabancı University to host classes and provide local logistics, and expect it to be the partner institution, though that isn't finalized yet. A short excursion to Izmir and Ephesus is planned to give students a second point of comparison, historically and politically, beyond Istanbul.

Faculty Directors

Co-developed and co-taught

Asli Cansunar

Associate Professor, Political Science, UW Seattle

Leads the political-economic core, drawing on her research on inequality, redistribution, and public goods provision in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire.

polisci.washington.edu →

Yusuf Pisan

Teaching Professor, Computing & Software Systems, UW Bothell

Leads the technical core across all three courses: networks and measurement, OCR and data pipelines, and geospatial analysis.

faculty.washington.edu/pisan →

Key Dates

Winter Quarter 2028

Program dates are anchored to the UW's official Winter Quarter 2028 calendar. Faculty-led programs sometimes run a few days longer than the on-campus quarter for travel; treat the range below as a planning anchor, not a final itinerary.

Instruction begins: Monday, January 3, 2028
Instruction ends: Friday, March 10, 2028
Final presentations: Week of March 11–17, 2028 (per UW final exam week)
Credits: 5 credits per course; up to 15 if taking all three. Each course can also be taken on its own.
Cross-listing: CSS 4xx (UW Bothell) / POL S 4xx (UW Seattle) — cross-campus listing pending administrative confirmation

Interested?

This program isn't open for applications yet

It's still being developed by the faculty directors and reviewed with UW Study Abroad. For general information on how UW Study Abroad programs work, and to be notified of new faculty-led offerings, visit the UW Study Abroad site.

Visit UW Study Abroad