Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Fields of Study
- Sociocultural Anthropology
- Middle East
Areas of Interest
Areas of Interest/Research Keywords: Violence, Mobility, Borders, Indigenity, Human Rights, Anthropology of Everyday Life, Waiting
Research Region: Turkey, Kurdish Borderlands
Biography
Dr. Omer Ozcan holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin.
His work focuses on temporal and spatial effects of militarization and human rights violations in Turkey. He has conducted ethnographic research among displaced Kurdish villagers, families of disappeared, human rights defenders, draft evaders, and smugglers to study the politics of waiting across the militarized Kurdish borderlands. Approaching waiting as a distinct temporal orientation and modes of political action, his work explores how local Kurds withstand, challenge, and evade spatiotemporal restrictions and human rights violations that shape the rhythm of everyday life in the region. He currently works on his book manuscript, Strategic Waiting: Violence, Mobility, and Agency in the Kurdish Borderlands in Turkey. In the Department of Anthropology, he will offer courses on global indigeneity, human rights, and ethnography of politics.