Dr Metin Koca
British Academy International Fellow

Profile

Biography

BA – Bilkent University
MSc – London School of Economics and Political Science
MRes – European University Institute
PhD – European University Institute

My research interests lie at the intersection of cultural studies and political sociology, with a particular focus on cultural change and reproduction, as well as the politics of difference, recognition, and tolerance. I aim to explore how societies navigate moral and ethical dilemmas, especially in contested domains where values are shaped, negotiated, politicised and institutionalised overtly. Methodologically, I combine ethnographic and archival approaches to capture the lived practices and historical trajectories behind political struggles over meaning and legitimacy.

I joined the Department of Sociology in March 2025 as a British Academy International Fellow and the Principal Investigator for the project, “Nonversion: The Conversion of Young Turks to Non-Religion” (IF24\100616). At its core, I address a puzzle rooted in heated public debates over young individuals’ religious socialisation and education. Addressing several gaps in scholarship on secularity and Islamism in predominantly Muslim societies, my research employs digital ethnography and in-depth interviews to explore the contexts, social interactions, and critical junctures through which young individuals come to identify as non-religious in Turkey.

This project builds on my broader engagement with the politics of culture. My doctoral research at the European University Institute (EUI) was a study of cultural change amid mass political struggles over values in Turkey. Through a cross-temporal analysis of three highly contested cultural landscapes—LGBTQ visibility in the entertainment sector, religious minorities’ funerals, and women’s rights in relation to clothing—I examined the dialectical encounters between the self and the other.

The research culminated in my monograph, entitled "Tracing Cultural Change in Turkey's Experience of Democratization: Unexpected Dialogues on Intolerance" (London: Routledge, 2023), which questions whether democracy can be sustained without a shared set of overarching “democratic values” and in the face of persistent value conflicts. I argue that rights, freedoms, capabilities, and social norms can be disentangled from the expectation of conceptual compromise, suggesting that democracy does not necessitate value agreement but rather the acknowledgement of value disagreements before negotiating the rest. This monograph received an honourable mention in the Young Social Scientists Award from the Turkish Association of Social Scientists.

My interest in dialectical encounters continued with my ERC-funded postdoctoral research as part of a broader project on youth radicalisation. In the ISLAM-OPHOB-ISM Advanced Grant Project (No: 785934), which analysed Islamist and nativist radicalisations in Europe, I made peer-reviewed publications, wrote reports and policy briefs, organised events, and delivered numerous invited talks. As part of these dissemination activities, I examined the ideological, socioeconomic, and spatial dimensions of violent and non-violent radicalisation.

Alongside my research, I held several teaching positions and engaged in various teaching activities at English-speaking universities, delivering semester-long courses and seminars on religion and the human sciences, violent and non-violent radicalisation, the European Union, and Middle Eastern politics.