Order of Merit for Yasemin Karakaşoğlu

On Friday, December 3, 2021, Professor Yasemin Karakaşoğlu from the University of Bremen will receive the Federal Republic of Germany’s Order of Merit together with seven other women and seven men at Bellevue Palace.

The Bremen educationalist and 14 other citizens will be honored as they have been committed to supporting refugees, the integration of immigrants, as well as standing up for women’s rights, interreligious dialog, and better education opportunities.

“I send my heartfelt congratulations to Professor Yasemin Karakaşoğlu for this honor,” states the President of the University of Bremen, Professor Bernd Scholz-Reiter. “She is a renowned researcher who has always been dedicated to protecting the interests of refugees and people that have experienced migration.”

As an early and tough representative of the migration society, Yasemin Karakaşoğlu has particularly worked towards the societal and political participation of Muslims in Germany. “I see myself as a bridge builder between science, politics, and civil society,” she says. With her dedication at the interface between these three areas, the educationalist is making a contribution to the shaping of the migration society. The 56-year-old was a founding member of the the Expert Council on Integration and Migration and chairwoman of the Council on Migration. Amongst other roles, she is a member of the scientific board of “Islamkolleg Deutschland” and active on the advisory board of the Documentation Centre and Museum of Migration in Germany.

Profile:

Yasemin Karakaşoğlu is a Turkologist and educationalist. Between 2011 and 2017, she was Vice President International and Diversity at the University of Bremen. Her specialization is research into interculturality. The 56-year-old grew up in a German-Turkish household in Northern Germany and Safranbolu, Turkey. Between 1985 and 1991, Yasemin Karakaşoğlu studied Turkology with the minor subjects political science and German Studies at Universität Hamburg and Hacettepe University in Ankara (1989). After her studies, she was a research assistant at “Zentrum für Türkeistudien” in Essen between 1991 and 1995 and then from 1996, a research assistant for intercultural pedagogy at the university in Essen, where she also completed her PhD in 1999. She has been professor of intercultural education at the University of Bremen since 2004.