Institute of Geography

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I'm a political geographer and qualitative social scientist. I am broadly interested in political geography, feminist geopolitics, geographies of migration and geographies of states. 

In my dissertation, I analyzed the Turkish-Muslim diaspora's everyday ethnoreligious spaces through an ethnographic focus on Turkish mosques across Germany. My current research project focuses on the everyday militarism in Kurdish villages in Turkey's Iranian, Iraqi, and Syrian borders through a critical feminist geopolitical insight. In addition, in collaboration with Dr. Banu Gökarıksel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I am carrying out a research project focusing on the gendered (geo)political construction of Syrian and Afghan refugees in Turkey.

After completing my BA and MA degrees in Political Science in Turkey, I obtained my doctoral degree in Geography in the United States. Between 2018 and 2021, I worked as an instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, and TED University. I have joined the Social and Cultural Geography group at the Institute of Geography at Bern University as of February 2022.

 

CV

Issues

  • Feminist geopolitics
  • Geographies of states
  • Geographies of migration and refugees

 

Regions

  • Turkey
  • Germany

Education

   
2015-2020 PhD in Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
2010-2013 MA in Political Studies at Istanbul Technical University
2005-2010 BA in Political Science and Public Administration at Kocaeli University

 

Professional career

since February 2022 Postdoc in Social and Cultural Geography, University of Bern
fall 2021 Lecturer, TED University
spring 2021 Instructor, Duke University
fall 2020

Lecturer, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Instructor, Duke University
2018

Lecturer, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
spring& fall 2016-2017 Instructor, Duke University
2016-2019 Research and Teaching Assistant, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

 

Awards

2019 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Graduate School Dissertation Completion Fellowship
2019 Duke University, Kenan Institute for Ethics and Public Life for Ethics Fellowship
2019 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kenan Trust Graduate Research Award
2018 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Geography, Steven Birdsall Summer Fellowship
2017 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Graduate School Off-Campus Dissertation Research Fellowship
2017 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Graduate School Summer Research Fellowship
2016 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Center for European Studies Faculty-Graduate Student Joint-Project Award
2016 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Geography Seed Research Award

 

Affiliations and memberships

google scholar

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Instagram

Website

Publications

Publication Year Type

Projects

Domestic Geopolitics, Intimate Military Strategy:

The dispossession, disconnection, and displacement  of Kurdish communities in Turkey's borders towns
Description

This study proposes a feminist geopolitical analysis of everyday militarism in Kurdish villages in Turkey's Iranian, Iraqi, and Syrian borders. This research aims to understand how fragmentations and ruptures in legal systems enable the construction of domestic geopolitical formations -both within domestic territories of states and in the intimate lives of local communities.
Link

 

Gender and Geopolitics: A feminist geopolitical perspective on the recent discussions about Syrian and Afghan refugees in Turkey
Description

In this project, we analyze the role of gender in the racialized and dehumanized depictions of Syrian and Afghan refugees in Turkey. Building on feminist geopolitics and postcolonial feminist theory, this project aims to demonstrate how gendered and racialized bodies animate geopolitical narratives and how geopolitical discourse contributes to sexism and racism.
Collaborators Dr. Banu Gökariksel, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Link

Presentations

2022  
October

Öcal, D.K. (2022, October). Stories, Impunity, Geopolitics: How domestic geopolitical strategies operate through state-led distorted stories and legal abandonment, Rencontres Scientifiques at The University of Neuchâtel - Switzerland
June Öcal, D. K. & Gökariksel, B. (2022, June). "The Border is Our Honor:" The Gendered Geopolitics of Refugee Bodies, Borders, and Territory. Feminist Geography Conference at the University of Colorado at Boulder (June 15-17, 2022) - USA
2020  
October Öcal, D.K. (2020, October). Invisibilization as a Technology of the State: Syrian Refugees in Turkey. Paper presentation at Encountering Difference, Embodying Boundaries, and Unsettling Borders, at UNC Chapel Hill
April

Öcal, D.K. (2020, April). Mosques as Everyday Geopolitical Spaces. Paper presentation at the annual meeting of American Association of Geographers, Denver, CO. /Cancelled due to COVID-19/
2019  
November

Öcal, D.K. (2019, November). Mosques as Spaces of Geopolitics. Paper presented at the monthly meeting of Religions and Public Life Graduate Fellows at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University
April

Öcal, D.K. (2019, April). 'The State' Like the Father's Home: The Intimate State of the Turkish-Sunni Diaspora in Germany. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Washington, DC.
2017

 
April

Öcal, D.K. (2017, April). "Feeling' the State: Alternative states and territories of the Turkish-Muslim diaspora in Germany. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Boston.
March

Öcal, D.K. (2017, March). The Familial State of the Turkish-Muslim diaspora in Germany. Paper presented at Center for European Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teaching

Current Teaching

Spring 2024 Research colloquium Social and Cultural Geography
Spring 2024 MA Lecture Political Geography

Past Teaching

Fall 2022 MA Lecture Political Geography
Fall 2022 Research colloquium Social and Cultural Geography
Spring 2022 Research colloquium Social and Cultural Geography
Spring 2022 MA Seminar "Geopolitics: Bodies, Bombs and Borders" (with Carolin Schurr)
Fall 2021 Lecture
  • Advanced Qualitative Data Analysis
  • Migration and Space
  • Urban Sociology
Fall 2020 Lecture
  • Space, Place, and Difference
  • Advanced Turkish
Fall 2018 Lecture "Transnational Muslims"
Fall&Spring 2016-2017 Lecture "Advanced Turkish: History, Politics, and Culture"