Dr. Ekin Kurtiç

Biography

Ekin Kurtiç is an Assistant Professor in Development Studies at the Centre of Development Studies in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program at Northwestern University and served as a Junior Research Fellow at Brandeis University's Crown Center for Middle East Studies. He has also held the position of Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Southern California. Ekin holds a PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. His research as a sociocultural anthropologist intersects political anthropology, materiality, infrastructure studies, political ecology, and environmental history. He focuses on the role of infrastructure in ecological contexts in shaping state power and techno-environmental expertise, particularly in rural futures. Ekin has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Çoruh Basin of northeastern Turkey, critically examining state-led projects that involve the construction of large dams and the restoration of natural environments. Currently, he is writing a book manuscript titled 'Sedimented Landscapes: Building Dams, Restoring Ecologies', which offers new insights into the social studies of water dams by placing human relationships with sediment at the center of its analysis. He is also embarking on a new research project on militarized ecologies, focusing on the Turkish military's role in afforestation and tree planting practices, entitled 'Soil Carbon Sink: Eco-fix in the Age of Climate Change'.

Research Interests