The British Institute at Ankara is pleased to announce the winner of its 2025 Masters Dissertation Prize.
The British Institute at Ankara (BIAA) is delighted to announce the winner of its 2025 Masters Dissertation Prize, recognising outstanding postgraduate research related to Türkiye and the wider Black Sea region.
This year’s prize was awarded to Zeynep Igmen, a former student at the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture, for their MA dissertation titled A practice of Fishing along the Bosphorus: Mapping Dalyans as Sites of Collective Making and Memory. The Panel commended Zeynep’s research for its ambitious and original character, emphasising that “the thesis’s strengths lie in the researcher’s clear dedication to researching her subject. This was evident in her interviews, her careful use of archival materials (which includes sources in Ottoman Turkish) and her strong commitment to interdisciplinarity, something especially fitting given the British Institute at Ankara’s own emphasis on interdisciplinary research. Bringing these perspectives together, the thesis offers an imaginative contribution to understanding urban transformation in Istanbul from the vantage point of the city’s famous waterways.”
Upon learning of the award, Zeynep commented enthusiastically: “I am profoundly grateful to the British Institute at Ankara for recognising my research and supporting interdisciplinary discourse, to all those I encountered during my fieldwork at the dalyans, as well as everyone who supported me throughout this journey.” As part of the Prize, they have been offered three years’ BIAA membership.
The panel received an excellent group of submissions that were diverse in theme, period and approach, and they were extremely impressed with the quality.
The BIAA Masters Dissertation Prize was established in 2022 to promote, recognise, and support excellent research by scholars engaged in the study of Türkiye and the Black Sea region across any period or discipline. Many BIAA members generously contributed to a fundraising effort to support an annual £500 prize, plus BIAA membership. You can make a donation to the BIAA Masters Dissertation Prize Fund today to ensure long-term support for this prize. The competition is open annually to students completing dissertations for a taught Master’s course in a UK University or Higher Education Institution submitted in the past academic year. The call for submissions comes in November of each year. See the current open calls for BIAA Grants and Opportunities here.