Writing as a survival tool in these “interesting times”
The Centre for Turkey Studies (CEFTUS) in partnership with Turkish Studies at SOAS and SOAS Kurdish Society is pleased to invite you to a public forum with one of Turkey’s best known novelists and political commentators, Ece Temelkuran on 16 May 2017.
Turkey is currently in the spotlight over issues relating to freedom of speech and expression, an issue with which Ece Temelkuran has repeatedly engaged during her prestigious career. Her recent novel, Women Who Blow on Knots, approaches another issue currently receiving considerable attention, namely women in Middle Eastern societies. Ece will be speaking against a backdrop of the recent global rise in populism, as well as women’s experiences in a post-truth age.
Ece will present on these and other pressing contemporary issues at this talk, with a Q&A to allow for a further fruitful exploration of these important subjects.
Please see speaker biography below.
This event will be kindly chaired by Mr Gamon McLellan, Teaching Fellow in Turkish at the Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East at SOAS.
The event will take place between 7.00 and 9:00PM on 16 May 2017 in Khalili Lecture Theatre at SOAS (Torrington Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1H 0XG).
We look forward to welcoming you to this event.
Speaker Biography
Ece Temelkuran is one of the Turkey’s best known novelists and political commentators, and has been published in The Guardian, The New York Times, New Statesman, Frankfurter Allgemeine and Der Spiegel. She has lived in several countries such as Lebanon, Tunisia, France and the UK while writing her novels. She was a visiting fellow at Saint Anthony’s College, University of Oxford. Her recent novels “Banana Sounds”, “Women Who Blow On Knots” and “The Time of Mute Swans” have been published in several languages. During her 20 years as a journalist, she was ranked as Turkey’s most-read writer on several occasions. She has been rated as “the one of the 10 most influential people in social media” on two occasions. She has given the “Freedom Lecture” as a guest of Amnesty International and the Prince Claus Foundation. She has among given speeches at Oxford University, the London School of Economics, Harvard University and the House of Commons in the British Parliament, among many other locations. She recently appeared on BBC’s Hard Talk and Imagining The New Truth series. She divides her time between Istanbul and Zagreb.
About SOAS Kurdish Society
The Kurdish Society at SOAS aims to bridge students with Kurdistan’s culture, language and political discourse. We are keen to promote the academic discipline of Kurdish Studies in organising seminars, conferences, presentations by PhD students, journalists, scholars and politicians of the wider Kurdistan region and the world.
Photo credit: Muhsin Akgun
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