Prof. Dr. Eray Çaylı

Eray studies and teaches the spatial politics of violence and its legacies. His work interweaves geography, anthropology, and material/visual culture. He joined University of Hamburg in February 2023 after a 12-year career in the UK where he carried out independent research and taught his own courses on urban and architectural histories of disaster and conflict, violence's visuality, and material/embodied politics of racism and racialization. At University of Hamburg, Eray has designed and is teaching courses on the racialized, classed, and gendered underpinnings and consequences of the Anthropocene, and on urban geographies of marginalization with a qualitative approach. His ongoing research explores the ways in which histories of political violence bear upon discourses and practices surrounding climate change, environmental disaster and resilience in Turkey, its environs, and their diasporas. Eray has acted as a reviewer for numerous journals and research institutions including the European Research Council, the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, the British Academy, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, The International Journal of Heritage Studies, Ethnicities, Political Geography, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Third World Quarterly, Geoforum, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, and Ethnopolitics. He is a member of the Journal of Visual Culture's editorial collective.

Books

2025. Extractivism as Aesthetics: Visual Ecologies of Violence and Agency in a Statusless Colony. Austin: University of Texas Press.

2023. Expanded second edition of İklimin Estetiği: Antroposen Sanatı ve Mimarlığı Üzerine Denemeler [Climate Aesthetics: Essays on Anthropocene Art and Architecture]. Istanbul: Everest (in Turkish).

2022. Victims of Commemoration: The Architecture and Violence of Confronting the Past in Turkey. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

2021. Architectures of Emergency in Turkey: Heritage, Displacement and Catastrophe. London: Bloomsbury/I.B.Tauris (co-edited with Pinar Aykac and Sevcan Ercan).

2020. İklimin Estetiği: Antroposen Sanatı ve Mimarlığı Üzerine Denemeler [Climate Aesthetics: Essays on Anthropocene Art and Architecture]. Istanbul: Everest (in Turkish). Winner of 2021 Cevdet Kudret Literature Award.

Selected journal articles

2023. (Un)Earthing Violence: Ecologies of Remembering, Forgetting, and Reckoning. History and Anthropology 34(1): 1–13. Co-authored with Erol Saglam.

2022. Testifying to Violence Environmentally: Knowing, Sensing, Politicizing. Journal of Visual Culture 20(3): 481–490.

2021. Contemporary Art and the Geopolitics of Extractivism in Turkey's Kurdistan. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 46(4):929–943.

2021. The Aesthetics of Extractivism: Violence, Ecology, Sensibility in Turkey's Kurdistan. Antipode 53(5):1377–1399.

2021. The Aesthetics and Publics of Testimony: Participation and Agency in Architectural Memorialisations of the 1993 Solingen Arson Attack. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 39(1):72–92.

2020. The Politics of Spatial Testimony: The Role of Space in Witnessing Martyrdom and Shame During and After a Widely Televised and Collectively Perpetrated Arson Attack in Turkey. Space and Culture 25(4): 675–688.

2019. Making Violence Public. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 43(6):1106–1122.

2018. Conspiracy Theory as Spatial Practice. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36(2):255–272. 

Guest-edited special issues

2023. (Un)Earthing violence: Ecologies of remembering, forgetting, and reckoning. History and Anthropology 34(1). Co-edited with Erol Saglam.

2022. Testifying to violence environmentally: Knowing, sensing, politicizing. Journal of Visual Culture 20(3).

2022. Spatial justice and earthquakes. beyond.istanbul 12 (in Turkish).

2020. Field as archive / archive as field. The International Journal of Islamic Architecture 9(2). 

Book chapters

2025. Extractivism. In: L Green, N Weiss and M Six-Hohenbalken (eds) The Routledge Handbook on Mass Violence (pp. forthcoming). London: Routledge.

2025. Environmental Security: Possibilities and Limitations as Seen from Two of Europe’s Borderlands. In: T Bonacker, E Conze and B de Graaf (eds) Oxford Handbook of Historical Security Studies (pp. forthcoming). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coauthored with Benno Fladvad.

2025. Witnessing and Evidencing Political Violence Visually: A Critical Response from Turkey’s Kurdistan of the Mid-2010s. In: D Sekulić, M Tomić, and P Sattler (eds) Life of Crops: Towards an Investigative Memorialization (pp. forthcoming). Graz: Art in Public Space Styria.

2024. Environmental Endurance by Communities Displaced on Grounds of Emergency in Turkey. In: G Astolfo and C Boano (eds) Displacement Urbanism. Politics of Bodies and Spaces of Abandonment and Endurance (pp. forthcoming). Bristol: Bristol University Press.

2023. The Imbrications of National Security Emergencies and Disaster Preparedness in Turkey in S Stavrides and S Portesi (eds) Inhabiting Exception (pp. TBC). Athens: Futura (in Greek).

2022. Imagining Heritage Beyond Proprietorship, Contesting Dispossession Beyond the Power-Resistance Binary in E. Uzer and F. Hammami (eds) Theorizing Heritage through Non-Violent Resistance (pp. 117-137). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

2022. The architecture of dispossession, disaster, and emergency in urban Turkey. In J Jongerden (ed) The Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Turkey (pp.360–372). London: Routledge.

2022. Architectural witnessing at the former Madımak Hotel in Sivas, Turkey. In Y Navaro, Z Ö Biner, A von Bieberstein and S Altug (eds) Reverberations: Violence across Time and Space (pp.277–294). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

2022. Introduction: The material and spatial politics of emergency. In E Çaylı, P Aykac and S Ercan (eds) Architectures of Emergency in Turkey: Heritage, Displacement and Catastrophe (pp.1–20). London: Bloomsbury/I.B.Tauris.

2022. Emergency as normalcy in mid-2010s Amed/Diyarbakir. In E Çaylı, P Aykac and S Ercan (eds) Architectures of Emergency in Turkey: Heritage, Displacement and Catastrophe (pp.69–88). London: Bloomsbury/I.B.Tauris (co-authored with Herdem Dogrul).

2022. Wahrheit, Erinnerung und Gerechtigkeit in Zeiten des kognitiven-kulturellen Kapitalismus: Ein warnendes Beispiel aus Frankfurt-Bockenheim. In O S Nobrega, M Quent and J Zipf (eds) Rassismus. Macht. Vergessen. (pp. 303–316). Bielefeld: Transcript.

2022. Democracy under construction, construction as regime: Design, time, and imaginaries of publicness in mid-2010s Turkey. In M Erlhoff and M Rezai (eds) Design and Democracy: Activist Thoughts and Practical Examples for Sociopolitical Empowerment (pp.135–148). Basel: Birkhäuser.

2022. Madımak shall be turned into a museum': Negotiating the Sivas Massacre through the built environment. In H Markussen and D Ozkul Kusoglu (eds) The Alevis in Modern Turkey and the Diaspora: Recognition, Mobilisation and Transformation (pp. 62–77). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

2016. Istanbul's artist-run institutions. In A Downey (ed) Future Imperfect: Cultural Institutions and Contemporary Art Practices in the Middle East (pp.394–408) Berlin: Sternberg.

2015. Diyarbakır's 'witness-sites' and discourses on 'the Kurdish question' in Turkey. In Z Gambetti & J Jongerden (eds) The Kurdish Issue in Turkey: A Spatial Perspective (pp.63–92) London: Routledge. 

Other articles

2022. Introduction to the special issue 'Testifying to violence environmentally: Knowing, sensing, politicizing'. Journal of Visual Culture 20(3):1–10.

2022. Racialized 'make-work-and-let-buy' capitalism: Working from home and living/dying from work. Society & Space, societyandspace.org/articles/racialized-make-work-and-let-buy-capitalism-working-from-home-and-living-dying-from-work

2020. Introduction to the special issue 'Field as archive / archive as field'. The International Journal of Islamic Architecture 9(2):251–261.

2020. The art biennial as a public health problem. Platform, platformspace.net/home/the-art-biennial-as-a-public-health-problem

2016. Bear Witness: Embedded coverage of Turkey’s urban warfare and the demarcation of sovereignty against a dynamic exterior. Theory & Event 19(1), muse.jhu.edu/article/610225

2016. Inheriting dispossession, mobilising vulnerability: Heritage amid protest in Contemporary Turkey. The International Journal of Islamic Architecture 5(2):359–378.

2016. 'Accidental' encounters with the Ottoman Armenians in contemporary Turkey. Études arméniennes contemporaines 6(2):257–270.

2015. Review of Urban Maps: Instruments of Narrative and Interpretation in the City. Journal of Urban Design 20(5):698–99.

2021. Convenor of 'Violence, Aesthetics, Anthropocenes: Colonialism, Racism, Extractivism' workshop and plenary, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

2020. Convenor of two panels at the Royal Anthropological Institute's 2020 conference 'Anthropology and Geography': 'Activist-Expertise vis-à-vis the Violence of the Anthropocene' (panel no.8283) and 'Unearthing Memories' (no.8359).

2019. Convenor of 'Testimony as Environment: Violence, Aesthetics, Agency' symposium, LSE.

2017. Co-organiser of the day-long symposium titled 'Field as Archive / Archive as Field: Architectural Insights from Turkey', the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL).

2015. Co-organiser of the symposium 'Protest, Refuge, Conflict Now' held at the History of Art Department, UCL.

In English:

• "Underwater," episode in Surviving Society's Material Crimes series (podcast), October 2024.
• Realms of Memory (podcast), February 2023.
• New Books Network (podcast), July 2022.
• Race, Space & Architecture - soundings, October 2022.
• Inside/Outside (radio programme), November 2011.

In Spanish:

• Oriente Medio (magazine interview), October 2022.

In Turkish:

• Onarım Atölyesi [Repair Atelier] (podcast), February 2023.
• Esmiyor [Breezeless] (podcast), February 2023.
• Gazete Kadıköy (newspaper interview), July 2022.
• Yeşil Havadis [Green News] (podcast; from 21'20'' onwards), November 2022.
• Mekan ve İnsan [Space and the Human] (web TV programme), September 2021.
• Açık Mimarlık [Open Architecture] (radio programme), December 2020; October 2020; September 2020; November 2018; May 2018; October 2014; August 2014.
• Metropolitika [Metropolitics] (podcast), October 2021.
• Pazar İlavesi [Sunday Supplement] (podcast), July 2016.
• Sanat Hayat [Art Life] (podcast; with Gül Köksal and Sinan Logie), June 2016.

• 2023. Groningen-Hamburg Funding (with Dr. Ethemcan Turhan from the University of Groningen).

• 2022. BA-CIFAR (British Academy-Canadian Institute for Advanced Research) Seed Funding together with the Decolonial Cities Collective.

• 2018-2022. Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship (based at London School of Economics and Political Science).

• 2020. London Arts and Humanities Partnership workshop grant. 

• 2020. Prince Claus Fund, the Netherlands (in collaboration with an arts organization anonymized here as requested by the funder).

• 2018. British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant.

• 2017. Scholarship for attendance at 'UK-US Early Career Research Collaboration Workshop on Violence' organised in Cambridge, MA by the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

• 2013. Salt Research Award, Istanbul, Turkey.

• 2012. German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Fellowship hosted by Humboldt University's Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences).

• 2011-2014. Graduate School Fund, University College London.

• 2010. The Ulla Fröberg-Cramér Foundation scholarship in support of master's thesis research (based at Konstfack - University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden).