Biography

Sıla Karataş (Ankara, 1987) studied architecture and received Master’s degree with the thesis “Building Marshall Plan in Turkey: The Formation of Workers’ Housing Question, 1946-1962” at the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey. She worked as assistant and lecturer in Turkey between 2012 and 2019; took part in architectural and urban design studios as tutor and reviewer, prepared and gave "Case Studies in Social Housing and Community Planning" among other Bachelor's degree courses for architecture students.

Her main research interest is history and theory of housing and settlement. More specifically, she investigates diverse institutional archives and personal papers to unearth the forms of transnational practice and intricate agencies of policymaker, planner, architect, contractor, and labour in housing production from policy and program to design, construction and inhabiting in Marshall Plan countries.

In her M.Arch. thesis at METU, she analyzed the postwar workers’ housing discourse on cooperatives as part of the ideological, institutional, social and spatial programming of the Marshall Plan and Americanization in Turkey. This research received Honourable Mention in Young Social Scientists Awards of the Turkish Social Sciences Association (TSBD). 

Her Ph.D. dissertation at EPFL concerns Marshall Plan's workers’ housing program to prevent communist tendencies and strikes in the participating countries, and analyzes cooperative housing by local labour unions in the participating countries in relation to the transnational activity by the United States and US-led international organizations on postwar development, labour affairs and housing. This research is awarded the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship for PhD and supported by the Swiss Confederation Federal Commission for Scholarships for Foreign Students (FCS).

Awards

PhD Scholarship 
«Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship ESKAS» Federal Commission for Scholarships for Foreign Students (FCS), 2019-2023.
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne (CH).

Visiting PhD Researcher Grant
EPFL Doc.Mobility, EPFL Doctoral School & swissuniversities, 2023-2024.
University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley), Berkeley CA (US).

Summer School Organization Grant 
EPFL-ETHZ PhD Summer School, ETH-Domain, 2022. 
Tschlin, Graubünden (CH).

Visiting Scholar Grant
«Short-Term Scientific Mission» COST Action 18137 European Middle-Class Mass Housing, 2022.
National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Athens (GR).

Master's Thesis Award
«Young Social Scientists Awards» Honourable Mention, 2017.
Turkish Social Sciences Association (TSBD), Ankara (TUR).