PHD CANDIDATE SOCIOCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

She/Her/Hers

Matriculated September 2023

Research Interests

Political anthropology; resistance and activism; affect and emotions; gender and sexuality; migration and (im)mobilities; nationalism and citizenship; Turkey, Europe and the broader Middle East.

About

Hazal Aydın is a PhD candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at Boston University, currently conducting long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Istanbul. She holds a BA in Sociology from Boğaziçi University and an MA in Comparative Studies in History and Society from Koç University. Before joining BU, she was a research assistant on the ERC-funded Takhayyul Project at UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity. She is co-creator of the “Imagining Turkey” podcast series.

Hazal’s research focuses on how and why people who have the means to detach from politics stay attached to it under repressive conditions for uncertain political gains. She is interested in the affective and everyday labor of sustaining visible left-wing resistance rather than withdrawing into private life, and in how different political actors in Istanbul, including activists, civil society workers, and human rights defenders, inhabit this attachment. Her work examines the structures of feeling that hold political communities together as conditions for collective action keep narrowing, with a primary focus on how privilege, exhaustion, and rootedness in place shape the everyday practices through which these actors keep showing up: in protests, in cultural spaces, in unionizing. She also asks how the boundaries of what counts as meaningful resistance are drawn and renegotiated within these communities. Although her research is based in Istanbul, it opens onto a broader and increasingly urgent question: the possibilities and limits of resistance as right-wing authoritarian governments take hold across much of the world, what makes it endure and what wears it down.

Awards & Grants

  • Summer Mini-Grant, BU Center for Innovation in Social Sciences. (2026).
  • Campagna-Kerven Graduate Fellowship, Boston University. (2026).
  • Summer Mini-Grant, BU Center for Innovation in Social Sciences. (2025).
  • Short-term Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship (GRAF), Boston University. (2024).
  • GRS Dean’s Fellowship, Boston University. (2023).
  • Middle East Section Best Graduate Paper Prize, American Anthropological Association. (2023)

Publications

Peer-Reviewed
  • Aydın, Hazal. Forthcoming 2028. “Open Body, Theatrical Intimacy and Sexual Harassment: Understanding Gendered Embodiments Through Turkey’s Theatre Industry.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies.
  • Aydın, Hazal. Forthcoming 2026. “Fetih Across Istanbul: A District-Level Mapping of Neo-Ottomanist Naming and the Politics of Belonging.” In Takhayyul Working Paper Series, edited by Sertaç Şehlikoğlu and Erol Sağlam. London: Institute for Global Prosperity.
Other Writings
  • Aydın, Hazal. September 2025. “Kamera Karşısından Sahne Üstüne: Neden Sınırlarımızı Aşmak Zorundayız?” Op-ed. Çatlak Zemin.
  • Aydın, Hazal. 2024. “Unraveling Silences and Reimagining Intimacy in Theatre and Beyond.” AAA Anthropology News.
  • Aydın, Hazal. November 2024. “The Transformative Potential of Intimacy: Turkish Coffee Talk and Ethnographic Listening.” Allegra Lab. https://allegralaboratory.net/the-transformative-potential-of-intimacy-turkish-coffee-talk-and-ethnographic-listening/
  • Aydın, Hazal. 2022. “Dignified Spaces and Affective Labor: Uzbeki Female Care Workers in Istanbul.” Podcast essay. Mediapolis 7(3).
  • Aydın, Hazal. 2020. “Book Review: Konstantinos Eleftheriadis, Queer Festivals: Challenging Collective Identities in Transnational Europe.” Sexualities.

Podcasts & Public Engagement

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