Ceren Akyos
Transdisciplinary researcher combining sociology, politics, feminist and decolonial thought with activist praxis. She researches, confabulates and acts with urban and rural political social movements to think about multiple forms of autonomy, the commons, global social justice, critical pedagogies and the construction of international and collective identities.
Her main lines of research are memory, migrations and feminist oral history in order to tell other silenced stories and build another collective historical memory; knowledge and ways of doing rooted in the practices and grammars of communities, collectives and (inter)territorial networks that trace other ways of living and possibilities of autonomy as diverse practices, processes and mechanisms of self-governance.
Her work explores interdisciplinary methodologies for reinventing practices of social emancipation, co-constructing repertoires of social struggle and ecologies of cross-border alliances, especially in the Global South, to open up horizons of radical imagination. Sharing knowledge, tools and stories; mapping new commonalities and translating them into creative formats and collective experimentation to develop transformative practices form the basis of her field of action.
She holds a degree in Sociology from the University of Galatasaray and a Master’s degree from Unica Euromaster Urban Studies in the framework of the 4 Cities programme. She completed her PhD in Postcolonialism and Global Citizenship at the Centre for Social Studies in Coimbra. She has developed research on cultural identity and urban regeneration in the framework of the European Capital of Culture Istanbul 2010; the claims of the squatting movement and its relation to different models of state and alternatives of autonomous social organisation; and is currently working with the Kurdish women’s liberation movement as the locomatora of the radical democracy project, and alternatives of decolonial feminist praxis.
She has collaborated with the urban intervention agency Repérage Urbaine (Paris) in the definition study of urban intervention in Sevran- Anciennes Beaudottes; the Urban Observatory of the Institut Français d’Études Anatoliennes (IFEA) Istanbul, in “Les projets urbains d’Istanbul 2010, Capitale européenne de la culture”; the Housing Office Aurea Social and Roig21, Raval in the creation of the activist network and cooperation with local collectives to establish alternative housing solutions. She has worked in the project APRILab- Action Oriented Planning, Regulation and Investment Dilemmas for Innovative Urban Development in Living Lab Experiences, Joint Call of JPI Urban Europe and TUBITAK 2013-2016, as a research assistant in urban transformation interventions in Derbent and Kartal areas in Istanbul.
Co-author of the article “Küreselleşme ve Kent [The City and Globalization]” in the book Küreselleşme ve Demokrasi. Küreselleşmenin Farklı Yüzleri [Globalisation and Democracy. The many facets of Globalisation]. And co-translator of The Squatters’ Movement in Europe: Commons and Autonomy as Alternatives to Capitalism by Squatting Europe Kollektive [en-tr] and The New Urban Question by Andy Merrifield [en-tr].