Archives of Doubly Disappeared Women in Turkey
Hazal Ozvaris
Current
From the late 20th century, female relatives of the disappeared worldwide have harnessed spatial politics to expose enforced disappearances, gathering in public squares and displaying photographs of their predominantly male kin targeted for perceived dissidence. Yet, those without advocating relatives remain largely absent in this ghostly public of headshots, just as they have from legal proceedings. My PhD project revisits this particular spatial condition by investigating, narrating, and visualising stories of Kurdish women doubly disappeared in Turkey; first through state-sanctioned violence during the 1990s, and later within human rights practices. Through a gender-based exploration of investigative aesthetics, the project reassembles these women’s lives from fragmented traces, legal archives, and landscapes of continuous violence, countering an ongoing process of invisibilisation that mirrors global patterns of disappearing women involved in political struggle.
Chase-AHRC Studentship
Chase-AHRC Studentship