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Dr. Turkman received her MA in Interior Design from The Savannah College of Art and Design and her PhD in Art from The University of Georgia. Her dissertation research took her to Istanbul, Turkey to study the drawings of Turkish children as a way to connect pedagogy and culture to spatial practices. For the past four years she held a lectureship at Istanbul Technical University in the Interior Architecture department. In the studio Dr. Turkman implements drawing practices to facilitate creative ideation and explores interdisciplinary connections between interior design and other fields.

Areas of Interest and Research

Dr. Turkman's research focuses on how extended reality platforms re-define and extend the interior in new ways. She is currently exploring the use of virtual reality as a creativity training and assessment tool for interior design students.

In this research she is developing a framework to integrate Extended Reality platforms into the studio both as a teaching methodology and as a pedagogical practice. Dr. Turkman's work considers the changing theoretical conceptions of the interior and the influence of technology in interior design.

Publications (Selected)

Turkman, S.G. (2020). Sharing pedagogy: The Autoethnographic mapping of movement. In Changing Educational Paradigms: New Methods, Directions, and Policies. Peter Lang.

Turkman, S.G. (2019). Studio Pedagogy in the age of apps: Smartphone apps and the influence on student creativity. IDEC Exchange: A Forum for Interior Design Education, 2019 (1), pp. 18-19.

Presentations (Selected)

Educator Workshop Presenter, “Creativity in the Classroom: Enhancing Creativity through Interior Architecture” at The 6th Annual Turkish Conference on Gifted Education hosted by Istanbul University, October 2019

Presenter, “Sharing Pedagogy: The Autoethnographic Mapping of Movement" at The 5th Annual International Eurasian Educational Research Congress hosted by Akdeniz University in Antalya, Turkey. May 2018

Artist Dialogue Exhibition, “At Home in Istanbul: Art from American Women in Istanbul” at The Interdisciplinary Research Conference hosted by The University of Georgia, February 2016

Artist Dialogue Exhibition, “A Study of Culture: the Drawings of Children from Istanbul” at The Interdisciplinary Research Conference hosted by The University of Georgia, February 2014