Meet the Team
Akin Aytekin
Akın attended Red Cross Nordic UWC between 2004 and 2006. After completing his BA in economics and political science at Westminster College, Missouri, he returned to Turkey in 2010 and started working as a journalist. After working for the Wall Street Journal and Reuters News Agency, he is now an editor for BloombergHT Turkish-language TV. Akın currently resides in Istanbul, accompanied at home by an energetic little French bulldog.
Dorontinë Berishaj
Born and raised in an Albanian family in Montenegro, Dorontinë has always had a strong interest in people. She attended UWC in Mostar between 2009-11. She then moved to Minnesota to receive a Psychology degree at St. Olaf College. After, Dorontinë returned to UWCiM to teach IB Psychology. Outside of the classroom, Dorontinë plays the role of a lifestyle coordinator, supervises a peer support group and the Refugee Camp CAS. She enjoys talking about the cultures and languages of the Balkans, photography and yoga.
Svenja Budziak
Svenja graduated from UWC-USA in 2012. She earned a Bachelor's degree with a double major in Islamic Studies and History at Kiel University and went on to pursue her Master's degree while she picked up an additional Bachelor's degree in archaeology. She currently interrupted her graduate studies for the Bartos Fellowship where she works with high school students and does research on Cultures of Remembrance. Following the fellowship she will be interning with the German Historical Museum in Berlin.
Rabail Habib
Rabail attended UWC Red Cross Nordic in 2010 and graduated from Northwestern University in 2016 with a major in Radio, Television and Film and a minor in the Business Institutions Program. Working as a Film Producer, she hopes to produce content that starts important conversations and brings matters of identity, gender and culture to the forefront. She just spent three months volunteering at an international school in Tanzania. She had an amazing experience working on the UWC Short Course Bulgaria 2017 and is excited to continue her work with this course.
Melih Meriç
Melih is a first year student at Bennington College in Vermont, USA. He is focusing on Visual Arts, Animation and Queer Studies. He is a 2017 graduate from UWC Maastricht and has participated in many exhibitions throughout his experience in the Netherlands. He likes to create work that is focused around cultural identity and heritage, as well as self identity. Before UWC, he studied at TEVITÖL in Turkey and is excited to be a part of organizing this year’s Short Course.
Kim van Lookeren Campagne
Kim has a Mexican mother and Dutch father and grew up in Europe and the USA. She graduated from UWC Atlantic College and has a Masters in Social and Cultural Anthropology from University College London. She has an interest in migration and conducted research on issues related to refugee acceptance. Recently, she did an internship at the ethnographic museum in Leiden, where she developed a passion for promoting intercultural understanding through education.
Petr Knor
Petr Knor is a passionate explorer, UWC Mostar alumnus, and a lifelong learner from Prague who attempts to test his limits to understand more about his place in the world. He is currently a second-year political science student at the Central European University in Budapest. He served as a facilitator at SC Bulgaria and SC Belgium in 2017. In 2018, Petr is pumped to be helping with SC Belgium and Turkey.
Lara Savenije
Lara was born and raised in a small town in the Netherlands but currently lives in the cosmopolitan city of Istanbul. She graduated from UWC Mostar and completed a degree in Middle East Studies at Brown University. She since completed a research fellowship at the Migration Research Center at Koc University. She deeply cares about gender equality, social justice and historical dialogue. Lara has been coordinating the UWC Short Course Turkey since 2016 and is currently assisting a short course initiative in Lebanon.
Sophie Mak-Schram
Sophie is Dutch and British, and grew up across Europe. After graduating from UWC Mahindra and leaving the beautiful Maharashtran landscape behind in 2011, she went on to do a degree in literature and art history, and shuttled around British cities working for arts organisations. These included work for refugee and migrant arts charities, an artist-led gallery and an immersive theatre company. Now back in the Netherlands after eight years, she's a student again, studying for a Masters in World Art Studies at the University of Leiden. She also makes art (writing and performance), and really likes costumes.
Irem Soysal
Irem is a graduate of the UWC Short Course Turkey and UWC Dilijan College. She currently lives in New York City and studies Psychology in Columbia University. Irem is deeply interested in building bridges between cultures and has taken part in many initiatives on peacemaking and conflict resolution. In her free time, she is involved in performance arts, gender and sexuality related activism, and she enjoys exploring small restaurants around the city.
Margherita Tommasini
Margherita attended UWC Mostar in 2012-2014 and is currently finishing her last year at College of the Atlantic, in Maine, USA. Her studies have been centered around human ecology, climate politics, and economics. Margherita is also interested in community building and has worked as resident advisor and outdoor leader, bringing people together over shared meals and bonfire songs.
Gökçen Tuncer
Gökçen is a Turkish journalist born in 1985. After completing her bachelor's in Economics in Turkey, she moved to Sweden to pursue a master degree in Global Journalism at Örebro University. Between 2013 and 2015, she worked at Al Jazeera Turk as a producer and since 2015, she is one of the editors of BusinessHT.com, the second digital platform of BloombergHT. She is specialized in economics, cultural relations and digital media. In her free time, she enjoys lindy-hopping.