Irem Soysal

Irem Soysal

Cultural Strategy Executive (Numbers)

A native of Istanbul, Irem has lived and learned through the concrete jungle of New York and the medieval halls of Oxford before finally landing in London to explore the intersection of culture and strategy. Irem studied behaviour and culture with a BA focused on Social Psychology, Visual Culture, and Marketing. Then through her MSc, she spent a year musing about how the Internet changed the world and wrote her thesis on how social media shapes gendered identity development and social adjustment for young women. After graduating, Irem worked at the launch of a breathwork app (research and UX). Irem loves throwing brunches for friends, expanding her mammoth tea collection (my current favourite is Tung Ting Oolong from South Vietnam), and watching Golden Retrievers in the neighbourhood parks.

  • Narrated Galleries

    We love films, but narrated galleries – fusing showreels of still images and audio of participant commentary – creates outputs that allow for high levels of reflection and audience empathy. Ideal for user experience work, in other words

  • Crowd Communities

    We’ve a wealth of experience at setting up and managing communities for clients, with learnings on how best to engage audiences and a full box of tricks for maximising what we get out of the work – including geo tagging, streaming in social media data and a mobile optimised platform

  • Pinterest

    We’ve used Pinterest to really good effect on a number of projects recently, helping us to explore differences and commonalities among different typologies in areas such as fashion and style, home, holidays and entertainment. Engagement levels with participants always rank high, and clients love the vividness and clarity of the findings.

  • Citizen Journalism

    Citizen journalism works on the principle of making reporters of our participants, briefing them to capture what’s happening in the lives of their friends and family via video dispatches and blogging. It gets us places where we can’t otherwise get. It bypasses the bias of having a researcher in attendance. People are often more accurate reporters on those around them than on themselves, so that’s another bias circumnavigated.

  • Network Audits

    If you want to really understand how people interact with those around them, it’s logical to research interconnected groups of friends, family and work colleagues. First developed as part of our award winning word of mouth research for Guardian News & Media, and since then refined and reconfigured across a range of global projects, our network audit approach helps us understand who’s influencing who as authentically as possible.