I am a Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Milan Department of Social and Political Sciences. I hold a PhD in Social Sciences at the University of Padova, with a focus on social movements, urban space, and identity politics. Previously, I have also completed a PhD in Political Science and International Relations at Sabanci University (Istanbul), investigating the intersection of freedoms and security. I have had the chance to be part of University of California Santa Cruz and the University of Otago as a visiting researcher. I have worked as post-doctoral researcher in a joint project conducted by Sabanci University and KU Leuven, entitled "Assessing interdependence between the European Union and Turkey: Policies and cooperation in regional and global governance".

 

Among my contributions in various academic journals, I am also the author of the monographs Counter-terrorism and the Prospects of Human Rights: Securitizing Difference and Dissent published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017, and The Hostile City of Love and Antibodies of Hate: Urban Contestations of Identity and Belonging published by Brill in 2024. Given my interdisciplinary background, my research interests include qualitative social research, social movements, democracy and pluralism, populist right and far-right politics, urban studies, and migration. In my research, I employ a rich variety of qualitative research methods including discourse and frame analysis, ethnographic methods, qualitative interviews, focus group, archival research, visual methods, walking methods, cognitive mapping, and other creative methods.