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Kumru Toktamis

Associate Professor

Email
ktoktami@pratt.edu

A political sociologist whose historical-comparative, theoretically eclectic, culturally informed research focuses on de/democratization,  state formation, political violence, social movements, nationalism, and ethnic and gender politics in the Middle East.  Her work has been translated into Spanish, Greek, Sorani Kurdish, and Turkish, and she participated in feminist translation collectives to translate works of prominent women such as Susan Meiselas and imprisoned Kurdish female politicians. She has been a transnational activist, human rights researcher, educator, and occasional columnist since the last century. She worked for Human Rights Watch for more than a decade documenting human rights violations in Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s and wrote a dissertation on the relationship between Turkish state formation and the Kurdish mobilizations since the end of World War I at the New School for Social Research, while she was raising her son Mavi. She is the co-editor of Peter Lang Publishing’s section on Culture, Society, and Political Economy in Turkey.  She was one of the signatories of the statement by the Academics for Peace who, as a group, was awarded Aachen Peace Prize in 2016.

 

Ph.D., New School for Social Research.

M.A.  New School for Social Research

B.A., Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey;

 

Peer- reviewed Edited Volumes
Toktamis, K., David, I. eds. (2024) Repression and Resistance during the AKP regime in Turkey, Peter Lang Publishers.

Toktamis, K., David, I. (2018). Special Issue Repression and Resistance: Fragments of Kurdish Politics under the AKP Regime in Turkey, Turkish Studies, volume 19 issue 5. Taylor & Francis.

Toktamis, K., David, I. (2018). Democratization Betrayed-Erdogan’s New Turkey, Mediterranean Quarterly, Special Issue: Critical Crossroads- Erdogan and Transformation of Turkey ed., Volume 29, Number 3. Duke University Press.

David, I., Toktamis, K. (2015). Everywhere Taksim: Sowing the Seeds for a New Turkey at Gezi, Amsterdam University Press.

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles and Book Chapters

  •  2024 “Laissez-Passer Laissez-Mourir: Earthquake 2023 and  Capitalism that Discards and Disassociates Citizens in Erdogan’s Turkey” in ELECTIONS AND EARTHQUAKES: QUO Vadis Turkey? ed by N. Christofis, pp.157-170 Transnational Press, London.