Organising Committee:
Elçin Aktoprak – was dismissed as per an emergency decree in February 2017 because of signing peace petition from Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences. She is the author of States and Their Nations: Nationalism and Minority Issues in Western Europe (Tan, 2010) and co-editor of Nationalism in the Twenty First Century: Theory and Practice (İletişim, 2016), Democratic Representation in Plurinational States (Routledge, 2018) and Minority Self-Government in Europe and the Middle East: From Theory to Practice (Brill, 2019). Her research interests are theories of nationalism, minority issues in Turkey and Europe, the Kurdish question, conflict resolution and peace studies. She is the administrative coordinator of the School of Human Rights Association.
Berkay Ayhan – is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Kadir Has University. He received his undergraduate degree in economics from Gazi University, master’s degree in political science and public administration at the Middle East Technical University, and PhD degree in political science from McMaster University. Berkay received the Young Social Scientist Award of Turkish Social Sciences Association for his doctoral thesis in 2019. His research interests are political economy, public administration, and public policy. His work appeared in journals such as International Review of Administrative Sciences, Turkish Studies, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, and Amme Idaresi Dergisi.
Ecehan Balta – is a sociologist and holds a PhD in political science. She is a trade union activist with particular interest in ecofeminism, agriculture and peasant movements. She is a partner of Yerkure Local Studies Cooperation.
Coşku Çelik – is an Assistant Professor at Kadir Has University, Istanbul. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and Public Administration from the Middle East Technical University. After completing her Ph.D., she worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at York University, Canada, between 2019 and 2022. Her research interest lies at the intersection of labour studies, development studies, and feminist political economy. She has worked extensively on natural resource extraction, rural development, political economy of work, and social reproduction in Turkey. Her current research investigates the structural links between neoliberal rural development, food insecurity and women’s work in the Global South. She is an editorial board member of the Praksis journal.
Ezgi Doğru – holds a PhD degree in Political Science from York University, Canada. Her research interests lie in the area of political economy, state theories and urban politics. She is currently a faculty member in the Sociology Department at Anadolu University.
Saygun Gökarıksel – is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. His writing focuses on authoritarianism, law, memory, communism, and revolutionary politics, especially from the viewpoint of the European East and the South. His writings have appeared in journals and blogs including South Atlantic Quarterly, Dialectical Anthropology, Comparative Studies in Society and History, LeftEast, and Jadaliyya.
Ali Yalçın Göymen – holds a PhD degree in Political Science from Istanbul University. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Praksis Journal. Currently, he is a research associate and a Fellow of Einstein Foundation Academic Freedom Programme at the Centre for Social Critique, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His research focuses on Marxist theory of alienation, politics of the commons, and theories of revolution in the 21st century.
Ali Rıza Güngen – is a political scientist whose research focuses on dependent financialization, state transformations and public banks in the Global South. His articles appeared in The Journal of Peasant Studies and New Political Economy and he published extensively on the political economy of the emerging economies. Dr. Güngen co-edited the 2019 book The Political Economy of Financial Transformation in Turkey, published by Routledge, and is the co-author of Financialization, Debt Crisis and Collapse: The Future of Global Capitalism (in Turkish). His new book Politics of Debt: Financial Inclusion in Turkey was published in 2021 (in Turkish). Dr. Güngen has served as a member of the executive board of Turkish Social Sciences Association. He is the editor-in-chief of social sciences journal Praksis and is currently Middle East Studies Association Global Academy Fellow. His recent research inquires the limits and possibilities of the uses of public banks for an equity-oriented post-pandemic recovery in the global South.
Özgür Narin – is a member of Social Research Foundation, SAV, Turkey. He is an Associate Professor of Economics at Ordu University. He studies on the capitalist production of science and technology, particularly innovation and the changing scientific labour process. His current research is on Artificial Intelligence, “General Intellect” and the alternative reorganization of social production and society. He is also a member of IstanbuLab, an independent platform engaged in critical and constructive studies of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) in Turkey.
Özgür Orhangazi – is professor of economics at Kadir Has University. He published extensively on financialization, financial and economic crises, and alternative economic policies. His recent research focuses on concentration and monopolization in the US economy and financial fragility and crises in Turkey and other developing economies.
Cihan Özpınar – is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Galatasaray University, Istanbul, where he teaches political and social theory. He is currently working on a book project on the Muslim Question in Europe. His research interests include generational reproduction of migrant labour in France and French political economy.
Deniz Parlak – holds a PhD in Political Science from Ankara University, and is doing a second PhD in Political Anthropology at European University Viadrina, Frankfurt Oder. Her research interests lie in secularism, religion-culture relations, the political economy of Islam, and gender. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Praksis Journal.
Paul Reynolds – is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory, and its book series, and one of the organisers of both the annual London Conference and some of its International conferences (HM – http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/). His areas of expertise are Marxist theory politics and ethics of sexuality and queer ideas: Critical Marxist and radical theory and politics, particularly alienation and humanist philosophy; and radical intellectuals and critical literacies. He works with the Open university in the UK and in consultancies on radical research methods and ethics.
Aylin Topal – is an Associate Professor in Department Political Science and Public Administration at Middle East Technical University. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Critical Sociology and Praksis Journals. Her research interests lie in political economy of (rural) development, agrarian change, food politics and and state-capital-labour relations under neoliberalism. She is currently the General Secretary of Turkish Social Sciences Assosiation.
Galip Yalman – is a graduate of the Middle East Technical University, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, is an Associate Professor (emeritus) of Political Science in the same department, at the Middle East Technical University. He received his MSc. in International Relations from the University of Southampton and his PhD. in Development Studies from the University of Manchester, UK. His research interests extend from state theory to international and comparative political economy. He is the author of Transition to Neoliberalism: The Case of Turkey in the 1980s, İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2009; co-editor of Economic Transitions to Neoliberalism in Middle Income Countries, Routledge, 2010, and Political Economy of Financial Transformation in Turkey, Routledge, 2019. He was the local coordinator of a Seventh Framework Programme of EU, called FESSUD (Financialisation, economy, society and sustainable development) on behalf of METU. He is currently the President of Turkish Social Sciences Association.
Onur Yildiz – holds a Ph.D. degree in Political Theory from University of Essex. He is interested in radical theory, democratic politics, populism and political uses of art. He was the Senior Public Programmer of the cultural institution SALT in Istanbul.
Cemil Yıldızcan – is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Galatasaray University. His main research interests and publications lie in governance, central-local relations, and state theory. His current researches revolve around critical human geography with a particular focus on diverse (social/solidarity) economies and grassroots initiatives.
Contact:
The organizational committee of Historical Materialism Istanbul 2024 can be reached at: hmistanbul2024@gmail.com
Historical Materialism Istanbul 2024 