Annual Conference
Each year, the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program brings together scholars from around the world to discuss some of the most pressing issues facing Turkey.
2023 Conference: The Afterlives of Lausanne: Society, Politics, and Belonging after Empire
Read more on the 2023 conference webpage.
2022 Conference: Sites of Memory, Sites of Loss: Politics of Archeology and Heritage in Turkey and Post Ottoman Lands
Each year, the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program brings together scholars from around the world to discuss some of the most pressing issues facing Turkey from a global perspective. This year the conference’s theme will be “Heritage.” Within the purview of this conference, we follow a capacious and interdisciplinary approach to questions of heritage, including tangible, intangible, and natural heritage within the territory of contemporary Turkey and surrounding regions.
Read more on 2022 conference webpage.
2021 Conference: Queer Conditions/Kuir Haller
This year the conference’s focus will be on Queer and Gender Studies. The primary aim of the conference is to engage with the global debate taking place on intersectionality. More specifically, we are interested in analyzing the role of gender identity and dynamics in facilitating the reproduction of power structures, and in the mobilization of historically marginalized groups seeking to expose, challenge, and ultimately dismantle those structures. By examining emergent forms of these justice-seeking struggles, the conference this year will direct the scholarly gaze on shifting relationships and opportunities for political action in a deeply polarized Turkey.
Read more on the 2021 conference webpage.
2018 Conference: Education in Turkey
Read more on the 2018 conference webpage.
2017 Conference: Law and Politics in Turkey
How did Turkey get here? Answering this question requires scholars to (re)conceptualize the relationship between law and politics at this historic juncture. The 2017 Keyman conference took on the challenging task to trace the twisted path from reform to emergency.
Read more on the 2017 conference webpage.
2016 Conference: Historical and Comparative Perspectives on Kurdish Politics
The Kurds are one of the world’s largest ethnic groups without a state, constituting sizable minorities in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
They have recently become prominent in world politics due to their fight against the Islamic State in the midst of Syria’s civil war. Yet until now, their history has largely been one of marginalization, oppression and resistance across borders.
This international conference brought together cutting-edge research examining the last hundred years of Kurdish existence in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic in a historical and comparative perspective.
Read more on the 2016 conference webpage.