Özge Yaka has received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Lancaster University. Since then, she has held various positions in Turkey, France, and Germany, supported by Einstein, Gerda Henkel, and Alexander von Humboldt Foundations. She works at the intersection of human geography, gender studies, and environmental humanities and is interested in critical, feminist, phenomenological, and posthumanist theories of body, agency, and subjectivity, especially in the context of grassroots environmental struggles. Her work bridges contemporary (critical, feminist, and post-) phenomenology, environmental justice, and indigenous and relational ontologies in developing new frameworks, such as socio-ecological justice.

Özge Yaka is also interested in issues of conflict and migration and works on contemporary social movements and struggles in the Middle East around the issues of gender, environment, and justice. Besides her position at the Center for Geographies of Inequalities, she works as a research associate in the Neuer Lokalismus research project (Globalisation, Transformation, Gender working group, based also at the FU Berlin, Institute of Geographical Sciences), and she is associated with the MERGE (migration and the Middle East) research network based at Humboldt University. She is a member of the Global Young Academy (GYA).

Winter Term 2022/23

• GP - Theorie und Praxis anthropogeographischer Methoden
• S - Strategien und Instrumente der Entwicklungspolitik Teil II - Gesellschaftliche Dimension: Environmental Justice in a More-than-Human World

Research Topics

• Social and Environmental Movements
• Critical and Feminist Theory
• Gender and Environment
• Theories of Justice
• Environmental and Socio-Ecological Justice
• Water
• More-than-human geographies; indigenous, object-oriented, and relational ontologies
• Energy Geographies
• Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Phenomenology
• Body, Sense, Affect, and Memory
• Migration and Conflict
• Turkey

Projects

Ongoing

"Neuer Lokalismus: Ressource friedlicher Konfliktbearbeitung in Stadt und Land", funded by Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung (DSF), with Prof. Dr. Antonie Schmiz.

Completed

Emergent community and the Struggles for Commons, as a part of the Rethinking Crisis project led by Prof. Nancy Fraser and supported by the Einstein Foundation, based at the GSNAS, FU Berlin (2013-2015)

Watershed: Struggles around Water Usage Rights and the Challenge for Global Justice, under Prof. Nancy Fraser’s Chair of Rethinking Global Justice, supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, based at Collège d'études mondiales, FMSH-Paris (2015-2016)

Fighting for the River: Gender, Body, and Agency in the Struggles against Hydropower Plants in Turkey (book project), based at Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity, Potsdam University, supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2018-2022).

Monograph

• *2023 Fighting for the River: Gender, Body and Agency in Environmental Struggles, under contract with the University of California Press.

 Papers in peer reviewed journals

• 2023 “More-than-human lifeworlds: ethics, ontology and relationality in the struggles against hydropower in Turkey”, Society and Natural Resources, under review (commissioned for the special volume “What is at Stake? Ontological Dimensions of Environmental Conflicts”).

• 2021 “Genre, corps et agentivité politique: analyser l’activisme environnement des femmes avec Merleau-Ponty” (Gender, body and political agency: analysing women’s environmental activism with Merleau-Ponty, translated to French by Jerome Melancon), Tumultus 56, 93-113.

• 2020 “Justice as relationality: socio-ecological justice in the context of anti-hydropower movements in Turkey”. Die Erde: Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin 151(2-3), 167-180.

• 2019 “Rethinking justice: struggles for environmental commons and the notion of socio-ecological justice”, Antipode(SSCI) 51(1), 353-372.
  • Translated to Chinese by Kangkang Yang and published as 奥兹格·雅卡,杨抗抗.重思正义:环境公地斗争与社会生态正义建构[J].国外社会科学前沿 in Studies in Foreign Social Sciences 2020 (4), 22-32.

• 2019 “Gender and framing: gender as a main determinant of frame variation in Turkey’s anti- hydropower movement”. Women’s Studies International Forum 74, 154-161.

• 2017 “A feminist-phenomenology of women’s activism against hydropower plants in Turkey’s Eastern Black Sea Region”. Gender, Place and Culture (SSCI) 24 (6), 869-889.

• 2016 “Why not EU?: dynamics of the changing Turkish attitudes towards the EU membership”. Journal of Contemporary European Studies (SSCI) 24 (1), 149-170.

• 2015 “Hegemony in the making: TUSIAD’s hegemonic role in the context of Turkey’s EU membership

  process. Spectrum: Journal of Global Studies 7 (1), 91-114.

•  2014 with Serhat Karakayali,“The spirit of Gezi: recomposition of political subjectivities in Turkey”. New Formations, 83, 117-138.

  Chapters in edited volumes

• 2021 “Migration and Democracy. Reclaiming Democracy from its Nativist/Nationalist Closure,” in: J. Mackert, B. S. Turner and H. Wolf (eds.) The Condition of Democracy, Vol. 2, 54-68.

• 2017 with Serhat Karakayali “Emergent infrastructures: solidarity, spontaneity and encounter at Istanbul’s Gezi Park uprising” in G. Brown, A. Feigenbaum, F. Frenzel and P. McCurdy (eds.) Protest camps in international context: Spaces, infrastructures and media of resistance, Policy Press, 53-69.

• 2016 with Serhat Karakayali “Humor, revolt and subjectivity” in A. Obenprantacher and A. Siclodi (eds.) Subjectivation in political theory and contemporary practices, Palgrave Macmillan, 203-218. A shorter version published in Bosnian as “Humor, pobuna i subjeckivnost” in I. Hošić and A. Husak (eds.) KRIZA, umjetnost, akcija (Crisis, art, action), 132-141.

• 2016 “HES karşıtı mücadeleler ve sosyal bilimlerde yeni ufuklar” (Struggles against hydropower plants and new horizons in social sciences) concluding chapter in Aksu, Erensu and Erdem (eds.) Sudan sebepler: Türkiye’de neoliberal su-enerji politikaları ve direnişler (Neoliberal politics of water and energy in Turkey and resistance), İletişim, 471-479.