Dr. Rüstem Ertuğ Altınay, a member of Professor Ayşe Çağlar’s research team until September 2018 in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, has received the ERC Starting Grant for his project “Staging National Abjection: Theater and Politics in Turkey and Its Diasporas.”
The project will analyze how theater has served the processes of national abjection, and how ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities have used theater to negotiate the politics of belonging in Turkey and its diasporas. Using both mainstream and alternative archives and ethnographic research methods, “Staging National Abjection” will investigate the key role theater has played in the constitution of “the Turkish nation” and its Others. The project, which is scheduled to start in February 2020 and last for five years, has a budget of approximately €1.5 million. Professor Çağlar will also serve on the project’s international advisory board.