Melike Yilmaz
Adjunct Assistant Professor, History

Dr. Yilmaz is the research coordinator (also the founding research coordinator with founding director Dr. Bonny Ibhawoh) at the Centre for Human Rights and Restorative Justice at McMaster University. She has launched and still teaches a new course at McMaster called “The Voices of Refugees and Displaced Persons”.

Having worked, lived and conducted studies in various countries across Africa, Central Asia, South East Asia, Europe and North America, she has about 20 years of international teaching experience. She also had administrative positions in every university she taught at. Her last position was the Director of the Institute of Languages and African Studies at Regent University, Ghana. She has been a visiting scholar/researcher at the University of Selangor (Kuala Lumpur/Malaysia), the University of Johannesburg (South Africa), the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and the University of Birmingham (UK), where she wrote her Ph.D. thesis.

Research interests: Global Human Rights, Immigration and Refugee Issues, Truth Commissions, Restorative and Transitional Justice, Generational Trauma and Genocides, Education of Youth

Teaching interests: Comparative and Contemporary Literature, Human Rights and Postcolonial Literature, African and Soviet Literature, Refugee Rights, Protection and Forced Migration

Consulting: Education of Youth, Education of Refugee Children, Education of Girls, Scholars at Risk

She is a researcher in Transitional Justice in the Lake Chad Basin Region Project, which is a consultancy study for the UNDP and Lake Chad Basin, funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) - Lake Chad Basin Commission.

She was the Project Administrator and is currently a collaborator at the Participedia Project Phase 2, which receives $2.5 million from SSHRC.

2021: The Participedia Project Phase Two: Strengthening Democracy by Mobilizing Knowledge of Democratic Innovations." (Stage 2) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). $2.5 million. Collaborator (Principal Investigator: Dr. Bonny Ibhawoh)

2020: The Participedia Project Phase Two: Strengthening Democracy by Mobilizing Knowledge of Democratic Innovations." (Stage 1) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). $20,000. Project Administrator (Principal Investigator: Dr. Bonny Ibhawoh)