Derya Aydin

Derya earned her bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and a minor in Philosophy from Yeditepe University before pursuing a graduate degree in Cultural Studies, which she completed at Sabancı University in 2017 in Istanbul. Her master's thesis, titled “Cemeteries and Memorials: Violence, Death and Mourning in Kurdish Society,” explores death and commemoration practices in the context of political violence in Kurdistan. Her interdisciplinary research interests primarily engage with the meaning of political death and the political subjectivity among Kurdish people. Her research brings together the critical studies of sovereignty, the anthropology of violence, colonialism, necropolitics, the gendered division of labor of mourning, and memory.

In December 2020, she became a cofounder and co-spokesperson for the Respect and Justice for the Dead Initiative, an independent human rights advocacy platform in Turkey. As a member of the editorial board of the Jineoloji Journal, she actively engaged with the contemporary debates in feminist theory and, more importantly, the gendered division of labor of mourning and the gendered role of the dead body.