About

Şehrazat Gülsüm Mart is a Ph.D. candidate in the Peace Studies & Sociology program at the University of Notre Dame. She is a Dissertation Year Fellow of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and a Dissertation Fellow at the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts. 

Her research focuses on identifying political and cultural factors that empower people against authoritarian regimes. She previously studied when and how public officials in Turkey consider the demands of marginalized communities in urban transformation projects implemented under authoritarian conditions. Currently, she examines how various historical and contemporary influences shape the strategic and moral decision-making of young activists in anti-authoritarian struggle through the case of a recent student movement in Turkey.

She holds an MA in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame and B.A. degrees in Sociology and Political Science & International Relations from Bogazici University in Turkey.

Current Research

My research interests lie at the intersection of political sociology and urban sociology. In the past, I researched the artistic-cultural transformation of Istanbul (Turkey) in relation to the inclusion of civil society in comparison to Essen (Germany) and Pecs (Hungary). I was also involved in an interdisciplinary project that designed post-earthquake shelters. I was working on how administrative data and information about the population can be integrated and included in the design. My current research for my MA thesis, as briefly described above, also explores how the organizational form of l(local and central) governments obstruct public participation. And how this exclusion leads to the failure of urban transformation projects. In overall, I am interested in making the "public" and the "civic" visible with a focus on the local. Which most of the time is profoundly relevant and useful to discussions of democracy and development.

Countries