Dr Setenay Dilek Fidler
I am a senior lecturer at Westminster Business School (WBS), University of Westminster, London UK. I have a quite diverse educational background, which has enabled me to acquire a wide knowledge base covering a range in the business field. I completed my BA in Labour Economics and Industrial Relationships, whilst my MA pertained to Money Markets and Stock Exchange Law in Turkey. I have been at WBS since 2013, where I completed my second MA International Business and Management and followed that by study for a PhD about highly qualified migration, which I successfully completed in 2019. I have been teaching a range of management and business subjects at WBS since 2015. Hence, I am very familiar with WBS culture as I have attended the university both as a student from 2013 from 2019 and staff member since 2015. I am very passionate about teaching, whilst always being greatly concerned about students’ wellbeing and having their voices heard.
I completed my PhD at WBS in May 2019. I have been always very much interested in the internationalisation of higher education and highly qualified migration. As I am myself an immigrant and ex-international student in the UK, I have often faced the question ‘Why did you come here?’. I have always provided one reason for this; I just wanted to start a new life from zero as the prime meridian (Longitude 0o) is in Greenwich in this country. Hence, at the beginning, my research was mainly driven by self-interest, but this situation has now transformed into it becoming one of my passions. I wanted to learn whether or not students like me were planning to return to their home countries or not and if the latter were the case, what were their reasons were for this life changing decision? To address this question, my research was focused on international PhD student mobility, a topic generally overlooked in the literature. My aim was to identify structural and agency factors influencing international mobility and to elicit how these impact on students’ capabilities to become mobile. From a theoretical perspective, this was achieved by drawing upon Structuration Theory together with the Capability Approach and applying these in the context of PhD students from Turkey in the UK. My current research interests include highly qualified migration/mobility, diversity, internationalisation of higher education and human capital development.
Research Assistant: WBS Learning & Teaching Funding for the project entitled “The Impact of Learning and Teaching of Enhanced Intercultural Communication-What International Postgraduate and Research Students at WBS Can Tell Us? by Dr Rebecca Wang in 2016.
Academic Partner: "WBS Co-Creators project entitled “The Evaluation of the impact of Study Trips on MSc IBM Students’ 6C” by Dr Rebecca Wang and IBM Master students in 2019.
Fidler, S. D., Clarke, L., & Wang, R. Y. (2022). The impact of political factors on international student mobility. British Educational Research Journal, 00, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3846
Can, A.S., Ekinci, Y. and Dilek-Fidler, S. (2023). Do Blue Flag promotions influence tourists’ willingness to pay a price premium for coastal destinations?. Tourism Management, 98, p.104767.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2023.104767
Dilek Fidler, S., 2016. International Student Mobility: Social Determinants of International Student Mobility: PhD students from Turkey in Cohen, J.H. et al. (2016), Turkish Migration 2016 Selected Papers. London: Transnational Press London.
Dilek Fidler, S., 2019. Social Determinants of International Students’ Mobility: Enhancing the Capabilities of PhD Students from Turkey (Doctoral dissertation, University of Westminster).
Conference
Social Determinants of International Student Mobility. The International Migration Conference, Lisbon, 2018, presented paper.
Why do they move? PhD student from Turkey.The International Migration Conference, Athens 2017, presented paper.
International Student Mobility: Social Determinants of International Student Mobility: PhD students from Turkey. The International Migration Conference, Vienna 2016, presented paper (rewarded with runner up prize).