My research interests lie at the intersection of political and legal anthropology, political economy, transnational flows, and science and technology studies, with a focus on the modern Middle East. I am currently working on a book project. Based on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Van, a predominantly Kurdish-populated province on the Turkish-Iranian border, the book examines how Kurdish smugglers and their lawyers negotiate and rework the official borders of commodity markets through techno-legal practices that range from official paperwork to expert witness processes. Combining a focus on materiality, the dynamics of national and global capitalism, and local regimes of political and moral values, my work shows how techno-legal processes enable unexpected political agencies and subjectivities to unfold.
Firat Bozcali is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of political and legal anthropology, border studies, science and technology studies, and Middle Eastern Studies, with a focus on modern Turkish and Kurdish politics. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Mellon Foundation, The Connaught Fund (based in Canada), and Raoul Wallenberg Institute. His publications include a number of articles in both English and Turkish in journals such as American Ethnologist, Middle East Report, and Toplum ve Bilim (Turkish), as well as edited volumes such as Turkey’s Necropolitical Laboratory. His commentaries, book reviews, and journalistic reports have appeared in various venues, including Cultural Anthropology, Political and Legal Anthropological Review (PoLAR), New Perspectives on Turkey, Arab Studies Journal, Birikim (Turkish), Jadaliyya, and the Kurdish Globe (based in Iraqi Kurdistan). He also translated Partha Chatterjee’s Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World into Turkish.
