Researcher: Yener Bayramoğlu M.A. (prom.)

Today, one of the biggest challenges in Europe is to understand the causes of vulnerable people fleeing from different regions, who seek safety and belonging in new societies, and even risk their lives to cross the borders that bound not only nations, but also cultures. An even greater challenge is to regulate the lengthy processes of migration involving the stages of departure, transit, and arrival in different countries. One particular aspect that has hitherto received insufficient attention within European discussions and policies on migration is the dimension of gender. Most notably, debates and policies have failed to take into account the vulnerability of specific gender identities and sexualities.

“Imaginaries of gender and sexuality on the move” proposes taking a comparative approach to research the migration strategies of queer refugees in Germany and Turkey, in order to produce knowledge about how being a refugee in a transit or host country affects a person’s gender identification, their relationships with communities, and their imaginaries of Europe. The project will take a novel methodological approach by focusing on the role played by social media in enabling LGBTQ individuals to develop new strategies to deal with their displacement experiences. The focus on social media will enable an exploration into how mediated and gendered imaginaries of Europe, especially Germany, shape queer migration. Furthermore, social media can offer insights into the production and circulation of alternative knowledge created by queer refugees themselves concerning rights, identifications, and strategies for securing personal safety.  

CV: Yener Bayramoğlu studied Communication Studies at Marmara University in Istanbul and received his PhD from the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at Free University of Berlin. His research interests include gender and sexuality, discourse analysis, cultural history, history of sexuality, migration studies, and queer theory. In his PhD thesis, he analyzed the historical transformation of queer representations in German and Turkish tabloids since the late 1960s. His work has been published in several books and journals. He teaches Gender and Queer Studies at Alice Salomon University in Berlin since 2015

Period: July 2016 to January 2017

Contact: yener.bayramoglu@gmail.com