Gokce Baykal is a social scientist and researcher with 10 years of experience providing technical expertise, undertaking research and fieldwork assignments and conducting evaluations for clients including the UNDP, ILO, UNICEF, WFP, ECHO, IOM, British Council, European Commission, GDN,  and international/national NGOs, such as Care International, Concern, Malala Fund, etc. She has a special expertise in conducting research on political and social impact of social policies, mainly social protection programs, such as conditional/unconditional cash transfers, livelihood programmes targeting refugee populations  and gender issues. She also has obtained extensive fieldwork experience, including elaborating fieldwork materials, training the fieldwork team, conducting focus group discussions and holding key informant interviews, leading a fieldwork in a developing country, analysing the collected data and drafting/writing fieldwork report, inception and final report. 

Most recently, she has worked on Evaluative Learning Study for Phase III of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) Assistance for Refugees in Turkey, implemented by IFRC and TRC  as an evaluation specialist of cash transfer programmes targeting refugee population. She has also completed a thematic analysis of UNICEF Burundi’s “Providing High Expertise in Social Protection: Bottleneck Analysis in the implementation of Cash Transfer Programme in Burundi” and she had also worked as a “piloting and modelling consultant” for UNICEF ECARO Office engaging into variety of projects, including designing Terms of Change, evaluation tools, for different UNICEF Country Offices, including Albania, and Kosovo. She has also gained experience as a team leader conducting cash/voucher transfer thematic studies, both research and need assessments, under Syria context. She has successfuly completed mid-term evaluation of “Strategic Mid-term Evaluation of the EU Facility for Refugees in Turkey (2016- 2019/2020)” as a national cross sectoral consultant on cash transfer, livelihood programmes and social cohesion for European Commission, and she also finalized “Participatory Review of National Committees response to COVID-19” mainly focusing on thematic area of social protection for UNICEF PfP Office in Geneva. Previously, she was part of the team of consultant in many evaluations, including “Evaluation of the United Nations Development Cooperation Strategy (UNDCS) 2016-2020” for UNDP as an expert of migration and social protection, and “Evaluation of Turkey Country Programme “for UNICEF Turkey as a national social protection/social policy” expert. Currently, she has been monitoring social protection programmes targeting refugee population, mainly conditional and unconditional cash transfer programmes in Turkey for EU Delegation.

She holds a BA degree in Political Science and international relations from Marmara University, a master's degree in Politics from New York University and a Ph.D. degree in Political Science from Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey.