The Third Disability Studies Fall School was held online between 1-11 September.

The Third Disability Studies Fall School was held online between 1-11 September.

Organized by Boğaziçi University Social Policy Forum and Research Worldwide Istanbul in partnership with Lund University Raoul Wallenberg Institute, the third Fall School for Disability Studies was carried out between 1-11 September this year. The Fall School is an education program free of charge for graduate or doctoral students who conduct or are planning to conduct research in the field of disability studies at postgraduate level. This year, the Fall School, which was carried out with a face-to-face education model in the past years, was held by means of distance learning due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Disability Studies Fall School aims to introduce the human rights approach to disability to graduate students who want to write their thesis in this field along with informing them of how disability is handled in different disciplines and supporting their scientific studies. Apart from Volkan Yılmaz (Social Policy), Hande Sart (Educational Sciences) and Engin Yılmaz (GETEM and Barrier-Free Access Association) from Boğaziçi University, the following names are included in the teaching staff of the Fall School: Beyza Ünal (Specialist Clinical Psychologist and Association of Women with Disabilities), Dikmen Bezmez (Koç University, Sociology), Göksenin İnalhan (Istanbul Technical University, Architecture), İdil Işıl Gül (Istanbul Bilgi University, Law), Nurseli Yeşim Sünbüloğlu (Özyeğin University, Gender Equality Unit), Resa Aydın (İstanbul University, Medicine). Beyza Ünal, who was awarded the Disability Studies Thesis Award in 2018 with her doctoral study completed at METU Clinical Psychology, gave this year's opening lecture. Participants watched nine hours of video lectures as part of the Fall School and attended one-hour discussion sessions on each lesson. In the last two days of the Fall School, the participants presented their research proposals and received feedback from the academic staff.

This year, the Fall School has welcomed 24 graduate students from different provinces of Turkey and the Turkish Republic of  Northern Cyprus. The majority of the participants (17 people) continued their education at the graduate level, while the rest (7 people) were doctoral students. Apart from Istanbul and Ankara, the participants were from Adıyaman, Bartın, Eskişehir, Konya and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The graduate programmes in which the participants were enrolled included programmes from different disciplines such as labour economics and industrial relations, interior architecture, business, women's studies, public law, urban, environmental and local governments, special education, social services and sociology.