Soft Tissue Manipulation (STM) is a powerful and direct form of mechanotherapy, which has significant implications in physical rehabilitation, disease prevention and health promotions. Different types of devices for manipulating muscle tissue have been developed for clinical applications and pneumatic compression devices are already in the market and widely used. However, these systems have limited control modalities and lack of monitoring the forces being exerted to the body during the application and previous studies have shown that the loading conditions of soft tissue have a crucial effect on the mechano-therapeutic treatment. One of the main drawback of the pneumatic compression systems is they do need rigid and bulky pumping systems for the implementation of mechanotherapy and this requirement greatly reduces the mobility of the device. Furthermore, rigid-body industrial robotic manipulators have also been used for mechano-therapeutic applications. Although these systems have the ability to perfectly manipulate soft tissue and apply controlled forces, they are expensive and do not enable safe human-device interaction due to their rigid nature. Overall, to address the challenges above I will employ textile materials to achieve both sensing and actuation with the help of phase change property of low boiling point liquids. The textile-based approach will lead to system that are lighter and mobile and safe for human-device interaction. Its successful completion will contribute to the acceleration of the soft tissue providing better and more effective therapies in terms of wearability comfort, mobility and power consumption. By combining my existing skills with newly acquired skillset that will be gained during the fellowship I will have an opportunity for securing a permanent academic position within Marmara University or a top-tier European university and starting my own research group.

Corruption has become a buzzword in both academic and policy debates over the last three decades. The initial view that “corruption greases the wheels of economic growth” in the newly independent states of Africa and Asia has lost its validity in the light of the current ever-growing global coalition against corruption, spearheaded by Transparency International and the World Bank. Despite the unrelenting global anti-corruption efforts, one thing seems clear: There is no such thing as a remedy to this “cancer”. In the light of the obvious failure of global anti-corruption initiatives, there has been a growing call to rethink the existing approaches, arguing for the necessity to understand better what corruption is, why it occurs, and what we can do to stop it. MOCCA is a research and staff exchange programme intended to contribute to the global and national efforts of understanding and counteracting corruption by conducting research on the multilevel orders of corruption in five countries in post-Soviet Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). This will enable the MOCCA team to: 1) gather original empirical data (based on research solidly grounded in fieldwork) on the interplay between international law norms, national laws, and local legal cultures and informal norms in Central Asia and their implications for understanding corruption and its societal effects; 2) engage with and situate our research in relevant theoretical debates and thereby advance scholarly debates on (anti-) corruption by developing new conceptual, methodological and comparative approaches to study and understand it; and 3) provide strategic intelligence for EU-based political and economic actors interested or already working in the region, and to inform international organisations and decision-makers in the EU and Central Asia on ways to combat corruption and improve the business and investment climate, the rule of law and governance in the region.

Over the last two decades, economic relations between the EU and the five post-Soviet Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) have evolved around two parallel and contradictory patterns. On the one hand, due to the efforts of the EU, economic relations and inter-dependence have increased and the presence of EU companies in the region has expanded significantly. On the other hand, inconsistent business ethics standards - and the peculiar way in which rule of law is interpreted and applied in the region, also called “the local way of doing business” have hindered and limited the role of foreign companies in the region. Building on recent political developments leading to the opening up of previously closed and inaccessible countries, CENTRAL ASIAN LAW is a research and training programme that aims to promote greater understanding and explanation of the interconnections between legal cultures, local business environments and governance in Central Asia. This will enable the CENTRAL ASIAN LAW team to: 1) produce new empirical knowledge on legal cultures and business ethics in the region; 2) engage with, and challenge, existing theoretical paradigms within socio-legal studies, law, economic and business sciences, Central Asian studies (post-Soviet studies, more generally) and governance scholarship; 3) provide strategic intelligence for business actors interested or already operating in the region; 4) inform international organizations and decision makers in the EU and Central Asia on possible ways to improve the business and investment climate, the rule of law and governance in the region.

According to the latest World Migration Report, 12 of the 20 top destinations for international migrants in 2020 were countries not belonging to what are considered traditional (Western) migrant-receiving countries in North America, Western Europe, and Australia. Yet, despite these ever-growing migratory processes in non-Western migration locales, the mainstream literature remains largely focused on the study of migrants’ experiences and immigration policies in the context of traditional Western liberal democracies. As a result, major non-Western migration destinations elsewhere in the world remain underrepresented by existing theories and comparative research within migration studies. The overarching objective of the MARS is to increase our scientific understanding about global, regional and national governance of migration and mobilities and thereby to contribute to the global and national efforts to facilitate safe, regular and orderly migration. This aim will be accomplished by conducting research and a staff exchange programme on non-Western migration regimes. More specifically, MARS is constructed around three interlinked goals, which are to 1) collect original empirical data on the interplay between migration governance processes and migrants’ experiences in non-Western migration locales; 2) engage with and situate our research in relevant theoretical and comparative debates within migration studies and thereby advance scholarly discussion on contemporary migration regimes (comparative migration studies) by developing new conceptual and methodological approaches to understanding migratory processes in non-Western locales; and 3) translate research findings into policy-relevant ways, including presentations and policy papers to provide strategic intelligence and policy insights for international organisations, development agencies, decision-makers, and practitioners inside and outside the EU on possible ways to improve migration governance practices.