Sehrazat Gulsum Mart

Cohort

2018

Subfields

Cultural Sociology, Social Movements, Theory

Profile

Şehrazat G. Mart (PhD ‘24) is a recent graduate from the Department of Sociology and currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame.

Şehrazat (sheh-RAH-zaht) has two research agendas focusing on power and social change. Her primary research examines the dynamics and outcomes of social mobilization during democratic backsliding. Her second agenda examines patterns of gatekeeping in knowledge production with a focus on pedagogical and professional practices in academia and other transnational professional fields. Her work has appeared in both academic and policy outlets, including Journal of Peace Research and Foreign Policy. As an educator, she empowers students with a global perspective and skills needed to drive meaningful change. She has received awards for her achievements in both research and teaching.

As part of her primary research agenda, she is currently working on a book manuscript, titled At What Cost? The Strategic and Moral Dilemmas of Anti-Authoritarian Struggle, that expands on her dissertation to examine why movements for democracy and social justice fracture under state repression instead of unifying around a shared sense of political threat. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and surveys, she examines the Boğaziçi University student movement in Turkey that mobilized between 2021- 2023. Despite mobilizing side by side in response to the same authoritarian threats, Boğaziçi students split into two factions with different activism styles: confrontational and playful. She argues that activists evaluate and engage political risk based on their analyses of power at the intersection of their racial/ethnic, class, and gender identities. They reflect on tales of political struggles and their family histories to evaluate who holds privilege and who faces stigmatization in relation to state power, mobilizing accordingly. By accounting for power and cultural influences, her research offers a novel understanding of the relationship between the political structures and meaning-making processes that drive mobilization. This research has been awarded an honorable mention from the Graduate Women in Science National Fellowship.

Şehrazat holds a Ph.D. in Peace Studies & Sociology and an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame. She received B.A. degrees in Sociology and Political Science & International Relations from Boğaziçi University in Turkey. She was a 2018-19 Mullen Family Fellow.