Ayşen works as the Head of English and Higher Education for the British Council in Turkey.  

In 2014, she led the publication of the State of English in Higher Education in Turkey, an important publication involving 40 universities in Turkey. Since then, Aysen has led on the development and the pilot of the British Council’s Quality Development Programme (QDP) for English in Higher Education, a quality framework which was piloted with 5 Turkish Universities in 2017 in partnership with the Council of Higher Education and the Higher Education Quality Board. Both of these projects had an important influence on the development of a National Quality Framework for English in Higher Education, which is still continuing in partnership between the British Council and Council of Higher Education in Turkey.

Prior to joining the British Council, Ayşen worked at Bilkent University for 20 years as a teacher on pre-sessional and in-sessional EAP and ESP courses and as a supervisor and teacher trainer. She has designed and coordinated the in-house EAP teacher training program at Bilkent University.

Her expertise is in Teacher Education, Reflective Practice, EAP curriculum design and implementation, Content Based Instruction, English Medium Instruction and Leadership in Education and Quality Development in English in Higher Education.

Ayşen is currently the Coordinator of the Special Interest Group for English for Specific Purposes at the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL).