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Hülya Arik is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography & Planning at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Her research explores the tensions between religion and secularism, focusing on political Islam, Islamophobia, and Muslim cultural politics. Central to her work are frameworks of feminist geography, geopolitics, and transnational feminism, drawing on cases from Turkey and contexts across the Middle East, Europe, and North America. Currently, she is publishing findings related to the cultural geographies of secularism and Islam in Turkey, with a specific examination of Islamic traditional visual arts in Istanbul from the 1990s onward. Her projects aim to unravel the cultural politics of Islamism and its intersections with neoliberalism, particularly as it is reflected in the emerging art scene shaped by young, pious women artists. Key themes in her work include feminist geopolitics, urban cultural geographies of Islam, and critical approaches to cultural and creative industries in non-European contexts. Arik actively collaborates with graduate students interested in exploring topics related to cultural and creative geographies of Islam and Muslims, particularly in the field of visual arts.
Department of Sociology