Centre for Applied Human Rights
Emel Kurma
Turkey, CAHR, Autumn 2018
Emel Kurma got her BA in Political Sciences at the Bosphorous University, in Istanbul. Down the road, she attended graduate studies on Urban/Regional planning at the Middle East Technical University, and eventually in Cultural Studies at Istanbul Bilgi University. She has free-lanced in tour guiding, translation, and, in film & documentary production.
Emel has been actively involved with civic initiatives and organizations advocating rights, freedoms, democratization and peace-building from below. She has contributed to relevant activities and publications of civic initiatives and civil society organizations, municipalities and universities in Turkey and abroad. Since the late 1990s, she has worked as the general coordinator of the (helsinki) Citizens' Assembly, a civil society organization based in Turkey, which she had initially joined in as a volunteer.
Emel's work and interests revolve around interlinked issues of societal transformation, social movements and civil society; transborder citizenship, politics and "the commons"; sovereignty, governmentality, agency and power; urbanization, and socio-ecologically credible economic alternatives. She is curious about philosophy, cultural and spatial history and history making, collective memory, pedagogy, maps and mapping. She is fond of traveling, reading, writing, drawing, tai chi, dance and dramatic arts.