Prof. Dr. Mehmet Sezai Türk was born in Çankırı, Turkey. He completed his primary, secondary, and high school education in Çankırı and graduated from Gazi University, Faculty of Communication, in 1993. In 1994, he began his academic career as a research assistant at the Department of Printing Education, Gazi University Faculty of Technical Education.

He received his Master’s degree in 1997 and Ph.D. in 2003, the same year he became a faculty member and department chair. Throughout his career, he held several academic and administrative positions at Gazi University, including assistant director and head of department. He earned the title of Associate Professor in 2010 and Full Professor in 2017.

Since 2018, he has been working as a professor at Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University, Faculty of Communication, Department of Radio, Television, and Cinema. Between 2021 and 2024, he also served as Dean, Rector’s Advisor, and Vice-Rector at Kyrgyzstan-Turkey Manas University.

Prof. Dr. Türk has conducted extensive academic work on Turkic World cinema, culture, and identity, contributing through numerous articles, books, projects, and conferences. He has also served as a jury member at national and international film festivals, as well as an expert witness, editor, and referee for many academic journals.

In recognition of his contributions to the Turkic World and Turkish culture, he has received multiple awards, including the Kyrgyz Republic’s Distinguished Service Medal and the 2024 Scientist of the Year Award presented by TABBİR, İÇAN, and DJB.

Ekmel Geçer is a Professor of Social Psychology at Marmara University, Istanbul. He holds a PhD from Loughborough University (2014) and has an interdisciplinary academic background rooted in psychology, complemented by expertise in communication studies and the psychology of religion.

He began his academic career as a lecturer in the Department of Communication at Sakarya University (2015–2019), before joining the University of Health Sciences in Istanbul, where he taught social and media psychology between 2019 and 2023. He is currently based at Marmara University, where his teaching and research focus on social psychology and positive psychological approaches to individual and societal well-being.

Professor Geçer has substantial international teaching experience in Psychology and has delivered invited lectures and courses at several prestigious institutions, including the University of Dortmund and Würzburg University (Germany), Birmingham City University (UK), the University of Warsaw (Poland), Sigmund Freud University (Vienna), and the International Balkan University (North Macedonia). His international engagement reflects his strong commitment to cross-cultural psychology and global academic collaboration.

His academic formation began in theology in Türkiye, which later evolved into a master’s degree in the Psychology of Religion. This early engagement with meaning, values, and belief systems significantly shaped his later orientation towards positive psychology and existential perspectives. Seeking to further integrate psychological theory with contemporary social issues, he completed a second master’s degree in New Media, Governance, and Democracy at the University of Leicester in 2009. His master’s thesis examined political communication through a psychological lens, marking the beginning of his sustained interest in media and social influence. During this period, he also contributed regularly to national newspapers and cultural periodicals in Türkiye.

Professor Geçer’s research lies primarily within social psychology, with a particular emphasis on positive psychology, psychological well-being, meaning making, and resilience in modern societies. His work also encompasses media psychology, cyberpsychology, political psychology, and the psychological dimensions of multiculturalism. He has published widely in peer-reviewed international journals and has presented his research at numerous national and international conferences.

Some of his most prominent books include:

1.       Family Psychology: Theory, Practice, and Contemporary Approaches

2.       Media, Popular Culture, and Psychology

3.       The Paradoxical Defeat of Authenticity: Essays on Communication, Culture, and Politics

4.       Social Media and Communication Psychology: Personality, Polarisation, and Algorithms

5.       Handbook of Social Psychology (co-edited with Meryem Serdar)

6.       The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (co-authored with Tolga Akkuş)

7.       Intercultural Communication: A Psychological Perspective

Prof Geçer is fluent in Arabic and English, is married, and is the father of two children.

email: ekmel.gecer@marmara.edu.tr

Professor Aydın Çam, a faculty member at Çukurova University’s Faculty of Communication, is a specialist and lecturer in cinema studies. His unique focus on the cinema history of the Çukurova Region, market regulations, the informal film economy, and the cultural heritage of cinema sets him apart. His research explores New Cinema History, cinema venues, cinemagoing practices, local film production and distribution, and archives. He is a member of HoMER Network, and also the coordinator of the EU-funded cinema heritage project ‘Dialogue for Cinema as Cultural Heritage: Identification, Recognition, and Community-Based Inventory of Cinemas as Intangible Cultural Heritage in Adana via Cross-Border Dialogue.’

Born in 1983 in Balıkesir, Turkey. Prepared his master thesis “Sociological Understanding of C. Wright Mills” at Istanbul University. Completed his Ph.D. at Marmara University, titled "Populist Cinema: Ideology and Politics of Turkish Cinema in 1960's". His research areas are as follows: sociology of Turkish Cinema; Islamism, and cinema; ideology theories, and populism. He has an edited book on Turkish cinema.