Biographical Notes
Before joining Rutgers, she held postdoctoral positions at Brown, Harvard, and Brandeis Universities. Her first book, Intimacy of Power: Women Prostitutes, Sex Work and Violence in İstanbul (Iktidarin Mahremiyeti: Istanbul’da Hayat Kadinlari, Seks Isciligi ve Siddet), was published in Turkish in 2011. Her more recent book, Violent Intimacies: The Trans Everyday and the Making of an Urban World was published by Duke University Press in 2024. Violent Intimacy has recently won the 2024 Ruth Benedict Book Award, sponsored by the Association for Queer Anthropology. Her research lies at the intersection of ethnography of sex/gender non-conforming lives and deaths; medico-legal regimes of sex, gender and sexuality; critical studies of violence and sovereignty; politics of mourning and grief; as well as transnational feminist and LGBTQ movements in the Middle East with a special focus on Turkey.
Selected Publications
Books
2024 Violent Intimacies: The Trans Everyday and the Making of an Urban World, Duke University Press; Winner of the 2024 Ruth Benedict Award, Sponsored by the Association for Queer Anthropology
2011 Iktidarın Mahremiyeti: İstanbul’da Hayat Kadınları, Seks İşçiliği ve Şiddet (Intimacy of Power: Women Prostitutes, Sex Work and Violence in İstanbul) Metis Yayınevi: İstanbul.
Editor
2022 Special Issue on Death and Afterlives in the Middle East, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 42(1)
Selected Articles
2022 Caring for the Dead: Corpse Washers, Touch and Mourning in Contemporary Turkey, Feminist Mournings Special Issue, eds. Jyoti Puri and Kimberly Juanita Brown, Meridians: Feminism, Race and Transnationalism, 21(2): 349-369.; Winner of the 2023 Paula J. Giddings Award, Honorable Mention
2022 The Cemetery for the Kimsesiz: Unclaimed and Anonymous Death in Turkey, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 42(1): 163-181.
2020 A Field of Silence: Secrecy, Intimacy and Sex Work in Turkey, Feminist Studies, 46(2): 1- 26.
2019 The Afterlife of Gender: Sovereignty, Intimacy and Muslim Funerals of Transgender People in Turkey, Cultural Anthropology, 34(1): 78-102.