Ozlem Ezer

Ozlem Ezer studied English Language and Literature at Bogazici University in Istanbul, received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Women’s and Gender Studies at METU, Ankara and York University in Toronto, respectively. She completed her post-doctoral studies at Linkoping University in Sweden. Her book Dogu, Batı ve Kadın came out in 2012. The book was well received and has been taught in several literature programs in Turkey.

Ezer’s deepest passion is studying women’s lives in their own words, which has led her to the intersection of academic and creative writing. She has developed an expertise in life writing as a result, and her interest in recording lives significantly shapes her academic and personal writing. Through her archival work, she focuses on marginalized texts and uses them as tools to criticize and contextualize canon formation in both English and Turkish literature and social sciences. She is particularly interested in recording the oral histories of women in underprivileged regions of Turkey, Northern Cyprus and Syria. She finds the Mediterranean and the Middle Eastern cultures fascinating and is eager to continue research in these areas.

Outside academia, she has volunteered and worked in a professional capacity with women’s shelters in both Turkey and the United States. She collaborated with Human Development Resource Foundation in Istanbul for the initial stages of her oral history project with the Syrian refugee women between January and July 2016. She has reached to several Syrian activists across Europe and North America and during her residency at CMES, she will record further interviews and work on her book on Syrian activists’ life stories. You can learn more about Ozlem's project "Syrian Womanhoods" here. 

Dr. Ezer has been the recipient of funding and support from assorted international institutions, including the Arte Diem International Festival (Belgium), the DAAD, Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice, the Lisbon Consortium, Swedish Research Institute, Gexcel (Center for Gender Excellence), European Summer School in the Digital Humanities, International Women’s Study Center, Beshara Trust, and Sallie Bingham. She has taught English Literature, Sociology and English as a Second Language at various universities since 1997.