British Council Newton Fund Workshop on Lean Humanitarian Food Supply Chain in Turkey

Brunel University London, UK and Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Turkey will jointly organise a workshop in Turkey on lean humanitarian supply chain and logistics to ensure efficient food distribution in disasters and emergencies.

The planned four day workshop, directed at early and experienced researchers, is to be funded by the British Council Newton Fund Researcher Links Workshop 2016 which seeks to address food supply challenges faced by Turkey in terms of providing the vulnerable and growing refugee population with humanitarian aid.

Turkey is the host to more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees. The displacement of vulnerable people has resulted in a situation underpinned by shortages of quantity, quality and diversity of food products.

The aim of the workshop will be to identify approaches to detecting bottlenecks in food supply as well as improving resilience to with sudden spikes in demand. In addition, the workshop will also consider the management of multiagency stakeholders and the need to deliver logistical support.

Dr Manoj Dora from Brunel Business School and Prof Tunç Medeni from Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Turkey jointly coordinate the workshop in Ankara.

From the UK side, Prof Zahir Irani, Dean of the Faculty of Management and Law, University of Bradford and Prof Amir Sharif from Brunel Business School will be the mentor of this project.

From Turkey side, Prof Hakan Tozan from Yildiz Techical University and Dr Emrah Akbas from Yıldırım Beyazıt University will be the mentor.

The planned four day workshop to take place in Ankara, Turkey in spring 2017 will also highlight future research opportunities on the subject of humanitarian aid and supply chain. 40 researchers (20 from the UK and 20 from Turkey) will be selected on a competitive basis to attend the workshop.

Early and experienced researchers interested in attending should contact Dr Manoj Dora (UK) at manoj.dora@brunel.ac.uk or Dr Tunç Medeni (Turkey) at tuncmedeni@gmail.com.