Research Assistant at BİLGİ Department of History Fikri Buber receives Master’s Thesis Award from The Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History at Boğaziçi University

Research Assistant at BİLGİ Department of History Fikri Buber’s thesis titled ‘The Making of Neoliberal Subjectivity in Turkey: The Case of Coaching as a Subfield of Self-Help Industry’ received Master’s Thesis Award from the Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History at Boğaziçi University.

Buber wrote his thesis with Assoc. Prof. Umut Türem from the Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History at Boğaziçi University and the thesis addresses the profession of coaching regarded as a subfield of self-help industry. In the thesis, Buber argues that career coaching is a strategy and technique of power that manufactures subjectivity based on the principles of entrepreneurship and docility and, in this way, aims to adapt  individuals to the neoliberal labor regime. The thesis attempts to prove this claim by analyzing semi-structured interviews conducted with career coaches and individuals who received coaching service.

Boğaziçi University Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History Award is granted to the master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation that the Award Committee of the Institute deems the most successful among the theses that are completed within the projected time period and have been nominated by the academics who are thesis advisors.