Welcome to my research profile.
Birgul is a Lecturer at the Centre for International Education at University of Sussex. She holds a PhD in Human Geography and two MA’s (one in human geography, one in international development) from the University of Bristol. She is a political geographer and ethnographer with expertise in contemporary politics and social movements in Turkey. Birgul’s work primarily focuses on the crucial role non-state actors play in social change. Major themes in her work include notions of democracy and human rights, nation state, social movements, knowledge production and construction of new futures, especially in relations to social movements constructing new paradigms towards creating new political societies around the world.
While Birgul’s work geographically focuses on political and social transformations taking place in Turkey, her works connects with other global spaces (agendas, ideas and technologies) against the backdrops of processes of coloniality, globalisations, long-term social and political conflicts, uneven development, inequalities and injustices. She is particularly interested in exploring how communities (individually and collectively) have engaged creatively and effectively in producing new knowledges and technologies for defending their individual/collective rights and articulating other options/visions for social/political futures.
Birgul uses ethnographic and participatory research methods with a strong emphasis on the dialogical and collective nature of research in mapping out situated political/cultural realities of people. By doing this, she aims to contribute to those existing social histories and political praxis of resistance, challenging dominant colonial and global exclusionary power structures and relations across the world.

Birgul’s broader research interest include:
• Decolonial, post-colonial and critical cultural political economy with a focus on the politics of knowledge
• Theories and practices of international development
• Human rights, democracy and citizenship theories with a focus on how they have come to create/define boundaries of inclusion/exclusion
• Processes of Europeanisation, globalisations especially in the context of Turkey
• Social movements and social justice, especially the crucial role of social movement as knowledge producers (especially in the context of contemporary Turkey)
• Contentious politics, contemporary politics and authoritarianism
• Concepts of ‘commons’ and ‘commoning’
• Prefigurative politics and practice as creating new futures
• Collective Memory and the notion of belonging (national and transnational) with a focus on the politics of collective memory in the making of alternative histories
• Critical Theories of social change (especially feminist and decolonial theories)
• Radical Pedagogies for social change with a strong emphasis on community education and radical education with a focus on local knowledges, histories, theoretical approaches
• Concept of solidarity, creating new
• Gender Justice

Current Research

Birgul is currently working on the Economic and Social Research Council funded project on Learning and Knowledge Production in Social Movements https://knowledge4struggle.org/ :a four-country, four-movement study about how social movements learn and build knowledge (2018-2021). Dr Kutan leads the research on the Peoples’ Democratic Congress (HDK), Turkey, case study. In addition, she is also working on the UNICEF funded Strengthening Rapid Education Responses in Acute Emergencies research project.