Ezgi Yaman Kennedy, PhD, MSW

Affiliation: International Children’s Center, Bilkent University

Ezgi Yaman Kennedy is currently working with the International Children's Center at Bilkent University. She also works as an Individual Consultant with the Council of Europe, UNFPA, and UNICEF.  She has been working for 10 years in the field as a qualified social worker, consultant, and academician. She holds a PhD degree in Social Policy, Labour Economics and a master’s degree in social work.  She has conducted qualitative research in Italy and Turkey to analyze the victim protection policies and services existing for human trafficking survivors.

Ezgi holds an award for the protection of children from trafficking, granted by the Swedish organization Child 10. She was the co-founder and country representative of ECPAT Turkey and Anti-slavery Global Collective, and is a proud member of the GAHTS. Ezgi founded Empower Turkey in 2022, a psycho-education and counseling centre which is a social entrepreneurship to support human trafficking, violence, and trauma survivors. She co-founded the NGO called KIDO International and two civil initiatives: Hatay Recovery Platform and Hatay Children's Platform just recently, after the magnitude earthquake which hit Turkey on 6th of February, 2023 to trace the missing children and to support the earthquake survivors.

Research Interests:

• Human trafficking prevention

• Migration

• Gender-based violence prevention

• Child trafficking prevention

• Child protection, social policies, social services, and case management system for survivors