Biography

Ronay Bakan completed her PhD in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. Ronay specializes in political violence, urban politics, and critical methodologies. Her research employs ethnographic methods to investigate the socio-spatial dynamics of everyday warfare, particularly focusing on racialized and ethnicized populations in the Middle East. Ronay earned her BA and MA degrees in Political Science and International Relations from Bogazici University in Turkey. In 2018-2019, she was a Fox Fellow at the MacMillan Center at Yale University.
Her book project, titled Counterinsurgent Urbanism: Weaponizing Land and Heritage in the Kurdish Region of Turkey, examines why and how states use urban development and heritage making as tools in counterinsurgency strategies. Grounding her theory in the civil war between the Turkish state and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), she argues that in addition to military tactics, counterinsurgent states employ legal practices and developmentalist strategies to destroy the environment of existing insurgencies while constructing the symbolic and material environment of future wars. She terms such processes “counterinsurgent urbanism.”
As a Max Weber Fellow, Ronay plans to finalize her book manuscript. In addition, she aims to finalize an article-length methodological piece provisionally titled “Fieldwork as Carework” while revising existing submissions.

Mentor

• Simone, Tholens