PhD started at September 2009 at Manchester

I obtained my undergraduate degrees, sociology (major) and politics (minor) (2006) as well as my  sociology masters degree (2009) from the Middle East Technical University (METU)/Turkey where I have been employed as a research assistant since 2007. My research interests are mainly around such topics as: cultural approaches to social class; class identity, symbolic boundaries and social inequality; taste, consumption and lifestyle patterns among middle class; locality and middle class formation. In my previous work, I studied how middle class identities are formed and differentiated from each other among a single middle class neighborhood’s residents in Turkey/Ankara. I explored how the different forms/amount of possessed capital and class trajectory shape the forms/strength of symbolic boundaries and therefore affect the way people experience their middle class position. For my PhD research I intend to study how the work of distinction operates on the different fields of consumption within the middle classes in Turkey by considering the effect of locality on the cultural formation of the different middle classes. Therefore I plan to conduct my research in middle class neighborhoods which are known to be different from each other on various grounds. At the end, I aim to question the variables that create the main patterns of differentiation in terms of taste and participation and try to evaluate them by considering the economic, political and cultural changes in Turkey.

Affiliated projects

• 2005-2006,    Field Researcher, “Similarities and the Differences between Experiences of “Workers” in Turkey before 1980”, Project Coordinator: Assoc.Prof. Sibel Kalaycioglu, funded by Scientific Inquiry Project of METU
• 2007-2008  Project Assistant: “Developing a Socio-Economic Status Index and Understanding the Parameters of Social Mobility and Stratification in Ankara-Turkey”, Project Coordinator: Assoc. Prof. Sibel Kalayciioglu”  funded by the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey