PhD Thesis
Title: Cotton Wars: The Politics of Life and Labor in Southeast Turkey
PhD Supervisor: Elisabeth Prügl
This research examines how practices of social reproduction and care sustain life in contexts where they are deliberately undermined, and where people are rendered surplus by state and market forces. Through ethnographic fieldwork in southeast Turkey, a conflict-affected region that is also central to domestic and global cotton supply chains, I trace everyday negotiations and strategies of survival in the aftermath of conflict and amid ongoing economic precariousness.
Profile
I am a PhD candidate in International Relations/Political Science and a researcher at the Gender Centre for the project Gendering Survival from the Margins. Previously, I was a teaching assistant for the MINT courses Gender and International Affairs and Systems-thinking and the Global Political Economy. I hold degrees from the Graduate Institute in Development Studies (MA) and in Economics (BSc hons) from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy. My work focuses on feminist international political economy, the intersections of development and security, and the politics of labor and corporate power.
Research interests
- Feminist international political economy and social reproduction
- Violence, post-war transitions, and displacement
- Labor standards, collective organization, and corporations
Publications
On feminist social reproduction, violence, and displacement:
- Gendered circuits of violence: A social reproduction perspective, with Elisabeth Prügl and Raksha Gopal. Book chapter for War Economy: Gendered Circuits of Violence and Capital, Routledge/RIPE Series in Global Political Economy (forthcoming).
- Displaced lives: rethinking survival, social reproduction, and (in)security with refugees, with Raksha Gopal. International Feminist Journal of Politics (online 12 February 2025): 1–25.
- Social reproduction, women’s labour and systems of life: A conversation, with Marianna Fernandes, Asanda Benya, Saniye Dedeoğlu, Alessandra Mezzadri and Elisabeth Prügl. Dialogues in Human Geography (online 30 May 2023): 1-11.
- ‘Le fléau de la soude caustique’: bauxite refining, social reproduction, and the role of women’s promotion groups. In The Lives of Extraction. Identities, Communities and the Politics of Place, International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement, 15.1 (online 22 May 2023). (Eds.) Filipe Calvão, Matthew Archer and Asanda Benya. Geneva, Boston: Graduate Institute Publications, Brill-Nijhoff.
On labor standards, collective organization, and corporations:
- Do workplace unions and collective bargaining matter for labor standards compliance? The role of local industrial relations in global supply chains, with Anil Verma, International Labour Review (forthcoming, June 2025).
- Do promises of support from distant buyers bolster or undermine local demands for reform? Evidence from the Indonesian apparel industry during the pandemic, with Tim Bartley, Journal of Industrial Relations (online 19 December 2024): 1-26.