Dr Melis Cin

Senior Lecturer in Education and Social Justice

Profile

My research examines the role of education in promoting gender equality, peace, and environmental justice across Global South contexts, using participatory arts and socially engaged methods. Across four connected strands, I am interested in how creative, community-led approaches can work with education as a space for equality and resilience, and in how research itself can be made more equitable.

My foundational work concerns gender, international development, and education, which I approach through feminist political economy and social reproduction theory. I examine the material and gendered relations that shape who education serves and at what cost, and I argue for understanding gender equality through Global South readings that enable contextual and decolonial approaches to gender equality in low- and middle-income countries.

I later extended these ideas into peace education and peacebuilding in conflict-affected contexts through the AHRC project Decolonising Education for Peace in Africa, developing peace pedagogies sensitive to gender, local knowledge, and context.

Most recently, this agenda has turned to climate crisis and environmental education, again through arts-based and participatory approaches, exploring how eco-creative practice can build green skills, resilience, and more just representations of the Global South. Methodologically, most of my work is driven by participatory arts methods, with a particular focus on how creative economies can engage communities with questions of peace, gender, and development. All of this work is underpinned by a concern with equitable research partnerships. I work with grassroots organisations and pan-African bodies to embed principles of equitable, locally led collaboration through the AHRC project Building African-Led Equitable Partnerships.

Career Details

I have previously worked at the Open University (UK), in Turkey and South Africa.

PhD, University of Nottingham

MA, University of Dublin, Trinity College

BA, Gazi University & University College South

Research Overview

My research interests include gender, international development, and peacebuilding in education. I use participatory art methods and feminist theories to address injustices faced by communities such as refugees, conflict-affected groups, or ethnic minorities.

Research Grants

British Academy - Next-Gen Partnerships: Advocacy and sensitisation of equitable research collaboration principles to new actors (2025-2026)

British Council - Eco-Creative Pedagogies: Training the Next Generation of Teachers on Green Skills and Resilience (2025-2026)

AHRC - Building Equitable African-Led Partnerships Across Africa: Setting the Agendas for Gender, Conflict, and Creative Economies (2024-2025)

AHRC - Embedding and Enabling Creative Economy in Marginalised Societies: Creative Skills for Peace (2021-2023)

AHRC GCRF Network Plus - Decolonising Peace Education in Africa (2020-2024)

AHRC GCRF -Youth agency, civic engagement, and sustainable development: Ideas for Southern Africa (2020-2021)

EU Jean Monnet - Women's Development and Europeanisation of Gender Policies (2017-2020)

British Academy – Gender-Responsive Peacebuilding for Intercommunal Conflict Transformation (2020-2021)

AHRC GCRF - Contextualising Peace Education in Nigeria and Zimbabwe: Networking as a Method (2019-2020)

AHRC GCRF Network - PhotoVoice as an educational tool for intercultural learning and peacebuilding between Forcefully Displaced Populations and Host community youth in South Africa, Turkey, Uganda (2019-2020)

AHRC GCRF - Street art to promote representation and epistemic justice among marginalised rural Zimbabwean youth – 2019