About Me
I am a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Sociology at Newcastle University. I received my Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Cornell University. My research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of anthropology, political theory, law & society studies, and urban studies.
My first book, Police, Provocation, Politics Counterinsurgency in Istanbul Cornell University Press, 2022) is the winner of the 2023 Anthony Leeds Prize for the best book in urban anthropology. Police, Provocation, Politics provides an ethnographically grounded analysis of the tension between policing and politics and presents a counterintuitive analysis of policing, focusing particular attention on the incitement of counterviolence and perpetual conflict by the state security apparatus. Rather than focusing on counterinsurgency’s strategies for producing docile and compliant citizens, I focus on the provocative aspects of policing. I argue in the book that counterinsurgency is a permanent and preventive war on politics. Engaging also with the literatures on political subjectivities, urban marginality, urban violence, racism and coloniality, memory, and resistance the book sheds light on the world-building practices of the oppressed and fearless resistance that is informed by what I call inspirational hauntings.
My work has appeared in various peer-reviewed journals, including Current Anthropology, Race & Class, IJURR, Social and Legal Studies, the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and Berkeley Journal of Sociology.
Most of my articles are available on my academia page: https://newcastle.academia.edu/DenizYonucu
In addition to my academic writing, I also publish opinion pieces in English, Turkish, and German and appear in the international media, including DW, Germany’s international broadcaster, and France24 to discuss human rights issues in Turkey.
My research has been funded by more than 10 institutions across a variety of countries, including the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Newton Fund, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Einstein Foundation, the DAAD and Cornell University.
I am Directions Section co-editor of the Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR) and co-founder and co-convenor of the Anthropology of Surveillance Network (ANSUR). I am also a host on New Books Network's Policing, Incarceration and Reform podcast where I interview authors on topics related to policing, surveillance, carcerality, and securitisation.
Before joining Newcastle University in 2021, I worked as a DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor (W2) in Anthropology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and held postdoctoral positions at the Center for Technology and Society at the Technical University of Berlin, the Zentrum Moderner Orient, and the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. In 2015, I was a visiting scholar at the European Institute of the LSE.