Hazal Aydin

Hazal Aydın is a Ph.D. student at BU in the Department of Anthropology. She started her Ph.D. at Koç University’s Design, Technology, and Society program, but decided to pursue her academic studies at BU Anthropology. She got her B.A. from Boğaziçi University Sociology Department and her M.A. from Koç University’s Comparative Studies in History and Society program. Her research interests focus on gender, sexuality, queer studies, affect and emotions, media studies, creative and culture industries, theatre and performance studies, political imagination, nationalism, and political Islam. She was a research assistant at the ERC-funded Takhayyul project at UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity. She is also the co-creator of “Takhayyul Nativeness and Emergent Issues” and “Imagining Turkey” podcast series.  To learn more about Aydin’s research and publications, visit her webpage.

In Spring 2025, Hazal received a CISS Summer mini-grant to support her work on her project “Decision to Stay: Collective Emotions and Belonging in Istanbul’s ‘Rescued Territories’” investigating how oppositional groups in authoritarian Turkey create alternative forms of belonging through spaces of resistance, examining how political emotions shape decisions to stay rather than migrate. Learn more in our featured article.