“Dynamics of Overseas Scholarship Programmes of G20 States in the Context of their Foreign Policy Priorities: The Cases of the United States of America, United Kingdom, Russia, China, Australia and Türkiye” is a research project funded by the Technological and Scientific Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK) under its 1001 - Scientific and Technological Research Projects Funding Program.

Dr. Selver B. Şahin is the principal investigator of the project that runs for three years between June 2022 and June 2025. It aims to contribute to the study of government-funded scholarship programmes offered to the citizens of developing countries by gathering and examining empirical evidence from six G20 countries; namely the US, UK, Russian Federation, People’s Republic of China, Australia and Türkiye which rank among the 10 most popular destinations for international students. It adopts a process-oriented analytical approach by gathering and processing data on understandings and practices of how scholarship schemes are devised, how they are implemented and how they are monitored in the specific context of these six countries. The data will also be used to trace the relationship between scholarship programs and foreign policy.

Using the grounded theory as a methodological approach, the findings from our research data will be categorised during our research process to develop authentic theoretical and conceptual approaches instead of testing the validity of the “soft power” theory, which is the general tendency in the literature. The findings will be useful for policy-makers and practitioners in terms of the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of effective publicly-funded scholarship programs for incoming international students.