Turkey, Winter 2028
DRAFT SYLLABUS — SUBJECT TO CHANGE BEFORE PROGRAM APPROVAL
Course 3 · 5 credits · CSS 4xx / POL S 4xx (pending)

Fieldwork Practicum: Technology, Inequality, and the City

The integrative course, where the program's central claim gets tested in the field.
MeetsWeekly studio (Fri) + site visits & team supervision
LocationIstanbul and field sites
PrerequisitesConcurrent enrollment in the program
InstructorsCansunar & Pisan, co-supervised
Course Description

Working in mixed teams, students carry a single applied project from question to public presentation over ten weeks, drawing on the technical and political-economic content of the two companion courses. Projects are real, local, and bounded: mapping a public good across Istanbul neighborhoods, documenting an information-control event, digitizing a small archival collection, or fielding a small, IRB-approved survey. Every team includes at least one student from each side of the program, and every project needs a genuine technical component and a genuine political-science component.

Ten-Week Arc (Draft)

How the course moves

Weeks 1–2

Forming teams, finding questions

Mixed teams form; scoping and feasibility of candidate projects.

Weeks 3–4

Ethics, risk, and method

Every project is gated behind an approved ethics and risk plan before methods are locked and piloted.

Week 5

Excursion week

Izmir and Ephesus, shared across all three courses.

Weeks 6–7

Collection

Teams execute their data collection or measurement plan under instructor supervision.

Weeks 8–10

Findings, critique, and delivery

Analysis, drafting, cross-team critique, and a public presentation in Week 10.

A Note on This Draft

All fieldwork is gated behind an approved ethics and risk plan, and any human-subjects work requires prior IRB approval. The recurring message of this course is to scope down and do it well; the same realism applies to this page; treat it as a working plan, not a commitment.