Authors
Authors who have been contributed to this blog and to the book “The Politics of the Commons: from Theory to Struggle”
Prof. Aykut Çoban
ACADEMIC - AUTHOR
Aykut Çoban was born in Karabük in 1965. He graduated from Ankara University, Faculty of Political Science, Department of Public Administration. Upon earning a scholarship, he completed his Doctoral Program in Sociology at Essex University (UK) in 2001. He became a professor in 2011. He began working at Ankara University Faculty of Political Science in 1991. His employment at this faculty was terminated due to an emergency decree enacted on February 7, 2017 due to his signing the petition “We will not be a party to this crime” organized by Academics for Peace. His research area is political ecology, environmental policies, climate policies, society-nature relations, environmental theories, eco-Marxism, embryo rights, and biotechnology. His work publications can be accessed at www.aykutcoban.org.
Email: ancoban@gmail.com
Assoc. Prof. Begüm Özden Fırat
ACADEMIC - AUTHOR
Begüm Özden Fırat is currently a faculty member at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of Sociology. She studied urban and cultural sociology, visual culture, and culture and social movements. She is an editor of the books entitled Commitment and Complicity in Cultural Theory and Practice (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009), Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas, Possibilities (Rodopi, 2011) and Resistance and Aesthetics in the Age of Global Rebellion (Küresel Ayaklanmalar Çağında Direniş ve Estetik, 2015, İletişim). Her book entitled Encounters with the Ottoman Miniature: Contemporary Readings of an Imperial Art was published in 2015 by I.B. Tauris.
Email: begumm@gmail.com
Assoc. Prof. Bülent Duru
ACADEMIC - AUTHOR
Bülent Duru was born in Ankara in 1971. Following his graduation from Ankara Atatürk High School in 1988, he won a place at Ankara University, Faculty of Political Science, Department of Public Administration in the same year. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in 1992. He completed his Master’s Thesis “Voluntary Environmentalist Agencies in Turkey in the Developmental Process of Environmental Awareness” in 1995 and Ph.D. dissertation “Integrated Approaches in Coastal Zone Management and National Coastal Policy” in 2001. He was employed by Ankara University, Faculty of Political Science in 1993 as a research assistant, and lectured on local management, urbanization policy, rural development, and environmental management. He was dismissed from the Faculty of Political Science in 2017 due to his signing the petition “We will not be a party to this crime” organized by Academics for Peace. He has produced papers, books, compilations, translated works, and studies on urbanization, local management, environmental politics, and political science.
Email: durubulent@gmail.com
Can Irmak Özinanır
ACADEMIC - AUTHOR
Can Irmak Özinanır graduated from Ankara University Faculty of Communication, Department of Journalism, in 2006. He earned his Master’s Degree from the same department with his thesis titled “Anti-capitalist Movement and New Media Technologies” in 2009. He became a research assistant at Ankara University, Faculty of Communications, in 2011. He was discharged from his position on February 7, 2017, pursuant to the Decree Law No. 686, due to his signing the petition “We will not be a party to this crime” organized by Academics for Peace. He is currently pursuing his doctoral work in the field of media studies and hegemony.
Email: irmakozinanir@gmail.com
Dr. Fırat Genç
ACADEMIC - AUTHOR
Fırat Genç completed his Ph.D. at the Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History in 2014. He has given courses at Istanbul Bilgi University and Boğaziçi University. He is a co-author of the book Indivisible Integrity of the Nation: Disintegrating nationalisms in the Process of Democratization (Milletin Bölünmez Bütünlüğü: Demokratikleşme Sürecinde Parçalayan Milliyetçilikler, 2007, TESEV). He has published articles on urban studies, space policy, social movements, and international migration in various journals and compiled books.
Email: gencfirat@yahoo.com
Luke Stobart
RESEARCHER- AUTHOR
Stobart is an activist in social movements in London, Barcelona, and Madrid, and is a writer and academic, specializing in Catalonia and Spain. He writes for The Guardian, Jacobin, Contexto, Viejo Topo, and New Internationalist. He lectured in political economy at Birkbeck and Richmond Universities. He has a PhD in immigration politics in Catalonia. He is currently writing on recent challenges to the status quo in Spain for Verso Books.
Email: lukestobart@gmail.com
Dr. Lülüfer Körükmez
ACADEMIC - AUTHOR
Lülüfer Körükmez completed her Ph.D. thesis on “Labor Migration from Armenia to Turkey” on the USA Doctoral Program, Ege University, Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, in 2012. She worked as a faculty member at the Sociology Department of Ege University until January 2017. Due to being signatory of the petition “We will not be a party to this crime”, she was discharged from the university. She has been working as a researcher at Turkey’s Human Rights Association since December 2017. Her academic research interests include international migration, migration movements in Turkey, irregular migration, and discrimination.
Email: lulufer@gmail.com
Dr. Özdeş Özbay
EDITOR - AUTHOR
Having graduated from Ege University, Department of International Relations, Özdeş Özbay completed his Master’s Degree at Lund University, Department of European Studies, Sweden. He earned his PhD title from Bilgi University in 2016 upon completing his dissertation “The Changing Working Class: A New Repertoire of Collective Actions and Organizational Practices in Istanbul”. He has worked in various non-governmental organizations and research projects. From 2016 to 2017, Özbay worked with the Right to Water Campaign. In 2018, he worked for the project “Defending and Gaining the Commons in Turkey” organized by the Civil and Ecological Rights Association (SEHAK).
Email: ozdozbay@gmail.com
Umut Kocagöz
RESEARCHER- AUTHOR
Umut Kocagöz holds his Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from Boğaziçi University and Master’s Degree in Philosophy and Social Thought from Istanbul Bilgi University, where he completed his thesis entitled “Rationality of the Politics of Commons”. He was involved in production of the documentary Against the Flow (Akıntıya Karşı, 2012). He is a contributor to the book For Everyone: A Critical Anthology on the Commons (Herkesin Herkes İçin: Müşterekler Üzerine Eleştirel bir Antoloji, 2017). Kocagöz is a PhD student at the Institute of Social Studies located in Hague. His areas of interest are rural social movements in Turkey, peasants’ struggles, food sovereignty, commons, and political theory.
Email: ukocagoz@hotmail.com
Assoc. Prof. Ümit Akçay
ACADEMIC - AUTHOR
Ümit Akçay is currently lecturing at Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR Berlin). He has previously worked for Istanbul Bilgi University, Middle East Technical University, Atılım University, New York University, and Ordu University. He is co-author of the book Financialization, Debt Crisis and Collapse: Future of Global Capitalism (Finansallaşma, Borç Krizi ve Çöküş: Küresel Kapitalizmin Geleceği, 2016, Ankara: Notabene,) and the author of the Money, Bank, State: the Political Economy of Central Bank Independence (Para, Banka, Devlet: Merkez Bankası Bağımsızlaşmasının Ekonomi Politiği, 2009, Istanbul: SAV) and Planning Capitalism: the Transformation of Planning and the State Planning Organization in Turkey (Kapitalizmi Planlamak: Türkiye’de Planlamanın ve Devlet Planlama Teşkilatının Dönüşümü, 2007, Istanbul: SAV). He is currently interested in international political economy, central banking, and financialization. He also writes opinion columns for the online newspaper Gazete Duvar.
Email: akcayumt@gmail.com
