Engaged Scholarship in/on Turkey

Presentation Room, Level 2, Michael Young Building, OU, Milton Keynes

International Development seminar hosted jointly with the OU's Citizenship & Governance SRA on Engaged Scholarship.

To reserve your free place, please email the Social Sciences Research Office.

Abstract
Dr Ayça Çubukçu (LSE), Dr Ulrike Flader (DEMOS), William Hale (SOAS) and Ozgur H Cinar (BPP University) will discuss the challenges of conducting research and/or being personally involved or politically active in the contemporary Turkish context.

Sharing their assessment of the state of Turkish academia in the context of recent events, they will also reflect on the effects and implications of the different solidarity actions with Turkish academics, in a roundtable chaired by Dr Agnes Czajka (POLIS, OU).
 

Ozgur H Cinar: The Current State of Turkish Academia
Dr Ozgur H Cinar is a lawyer and a senior lecturer at BPP University who received his PhD – for his thesis International Standards on Conscientious Objection to Military Service and Turkey's Resulting Obligations – from the University of Essex. From 2012-16 he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Oxford and has also worked as a legal expert for the Council of Europe since 2008. He has authored several books, book chapters and journal articles on the issue of freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the European Court of Human Rights and conscientious objection to military service.

Ayça Çubukçu: Editorial Engagements with Turkey
Dr Ayça Çubukçu is Assistant Professor in Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she leads a research group on Internationalism, Cosmopolitanism and the Politics of Solidarity. She is also a co-editor of Jadaliyya's Turkey page.
 
Ulrike Flader: Spies and Traitors - Engaged Scholarship in Repressive Times
Ulrike Flader holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Manchester. Her work is located in the field of everyday resistance, social movements, citizenship regimes and governmentality. Specifically, she has conducted research on the forms of everyday resistance which Kurds have developed against the assimilation policies of the Turkish state. She is an active member of the International Committee of the Academics for Peace and founding member of the Research Centre for Peace, Democracy and Alternative Politics in Ankara (DEMOS). Due to reactions to the 'peace petition', however, she lost her job at a university in Istanbul and was forced to leave the country after living there for the nine years.
 
William Hale: Academic Engagement with Turkey and Political Prospects
William Hale is an Emeritus Professor, and formerly Professor of Turkish Politics, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. He is a specialist on the politics of the Middle East, especially Turkey, in which he has been interested since his student days. He is author of the books The Political and Economic Development of Modern Turkey; Turkish Politics and the Military; Turkish Foreign Policy 1774-2000; Turkish Foreign Policy since 1774: Turkey, the United States and Iraq; and Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism, The Case of the AKP (co-authored with Ergun Özbudun).