PEOPLE_INT

Architect, Urban Designer, Istanbul

Araf Öykü Türken is a PhD candidate and research assistant at Yıldız Technical University. With a background in architecture, she completed her master’s degree in Urban Design. Since 2019, she has been working as a teaching and research assistant at Yıldız Technical University. Her research interests focus on digital participation, urban design, and walkability, with particular emphasis on spatial decision-making, pedestrian experience, and public space quality.

Architect, designer, educator and urban activist
Istanbul/Brussels

Aslı is working across critical design practices, alternative pedagogies, urban resilience and sustainability. She is the founder of Made in Şişhane which aims to safeguard Istanbul’s craft neighborhoods since 2006. She is a volunteer of Beyoglu Food Collective. She is currently work as Project Director at Beinsitu Sustainability Institute in Brussels. She involved in the Sulukule Neighbourhood Movement, which opposed top-down urban transformation policies in Istanbul. She develops strategic and creative actions by collaborative initiatives and alternative pedagogies to sustain neighbourhoods. Her work is interdisciplinary and cross-scale, with a strong focus on local knowledge, community engagement, and place-based collaboration. Through design studio courses at Bilgi University and workshops across different platforms, she fosters connections between craft districts and education and supports sustainability in local level by organising design camps in villages and towns.

informalities and urban interventions in space, art and architecture, contemporary art, urban history

Spent the last year on a research leave in Berlin Humboldt University on informal placemaking and art, I am an art historian and a urban researcher, and a fan of Istanbul and its inner-city dynamics and urban complexity. A full- time academic at Kadir Has University in Istanbul.

Sociologist & Member of the Economic Structure Team for the Istanbul Spatial Development Plan, Istanbul Planning Agency (IPA)

Ayşe Gümec Karamuk is an urban researcher working on informal urban governance, socio-spatial justice, and the legal dimensions of urban transformation. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Geography at University College London (UCL), where her research examines urban governance and contested planning processes in Istanbul and London from a socio-legal perspective.

Her work focuses on how legal ambiguities, institutional fragmentation, and state-led redevelopment shape everyday urban life and produce uneven forms of justice and exclusion.

Filmmaker and urban anthropologist. She graduated from Robert High School and Bosphorous University. Earning full scholarship, she did her M.A. at NYU. She attended NewSchool Film Program while she made the short film “Just Like Today” in NY. In Istanbul, she made award-winning documentaries, especially concerning urban issues. She directed her first narrative feature film called "Arabesque Underground" (Çekmekoy Underground, 2014). She is the founding member Filmperest, Script Development Group. She’s making the radio program “Lands and Faces, Suburbia and Suburbans” at Açık Radio. She is on the advisory board of International Women Filmmakers Festival, İzmir. After Hatay earthquake, she founded the ASIST Initiative and documented the earthquake zone for 8 months. She’s currently developing her feature film “PEEKABOO” as well as “SUBURBIA UNDERGROUND” (both supported by Turkish Ministry of Culture).

Urban Governance Expert | Policy & Networks Analyst

Ebru Kurt-Ozman is an urban geographer working at the intersection of urban governance, political power, and social justice, with a PhD in Human Geography and Planning from the University of Amsterdam. Bridging research and practice, she explores how state-led urban transformation, large-scale projects, and climate agendas reshape cities, and how communities navigate, negotiate, and contest these processes in everyday life. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Özyeğin University, affiliated with the Faculty of Business.

Her work is grounded in long-term field engagement in Istanbul, particularly in areas such as Fikirtepe and Derbent, where she traces the shifting dynamics of urban regeneration, community politics, and what she conceptualizes as ‘entrepreneurial citizenship.’ She has contributed to international research collaborations such as the WHIG (What is Governed in Cities) project, as well as to national policy processes including Türkiye’s National Spatial Strategy Plan. She is also a trainer in the YES-TR Green Certification Program for Buildings and Settlements, where she develops and delivers modules on social and economic sustainability.

Moving across academia, policy, and civil society, she engages with strategic planning, sustainability transitions, and governance analysis. Through research, teaching, and public engagement, she brings together critical urban theory and lived urban realities, with a focus on advancing more just and politically aware urban futures.

Emrah Altınok is an Istanbul-based artist, researcher, urban activist, and writer, member of PEN International. His work sits at the intersection of critical urban theory, political economy, and spatial practice — with a sustained focus on post-capitalist urbanism, degrowth, solidarity economies, and cooperative housing. He has conducted participatory planning and design workshops across dozens of neighborhoods, from Gülsuyu-Gülensu to Şahintepe, Başakşehir, and continues to engage directly with communities navigating Istanbul's intensifying urban transformation.

Since 2012, he has been a faculty member at Istanbul Bilgi University's Department of Architecture, and since 2025, a part-time instructor in Wentworth Institute of Technology's (Boston, USA) international program. He has collaborated with institutions including Parsons School of Design, LSE, ETH Zurich, TU Munich, and the Strelka Institute. His interdisciplinary work has been exhibited at over ten national and international art institutions, including MAXXI in Rome, and published by outlets such as the Financial Times, Wired, Tracés, Die Zeit, Random House, Penguin, and De Geus. He is also the author of three poetry collections and one music album.

Urban sociology, migration, refugee integration, urban citizenship, cultural spaces, and everyday belonging.


I am a PhD sociologist, humanitarian professional, and urban researcher working on migration, refugee integration, politics of belonging, and everyday citizenship. For more than ten years, I have moved between humanitarian practice, academic research, and university teaching, with a particular focus on how displaced communities navigate cities, build forms of belonging, and create cultural and social infrastructures. My background connects different regional contexts, including Turkey, the Middle East, and the United States, where I have worked across refugee-serving institutions, urban research, and higher education. I currently teach psychology and sociology courses at the university level, while continuing to write on migration, urban life, and belonging. Fun fact: I am from Yeldeğirmeni, so this walk is also shaped by personal memories, familiar streets, and a long-standing connection to the neighborhood

Murat Güney is a social scientist and an urban researcher. He works as Expert-in-
Residence at the Columbia Global Center in Istanbul, supporting Resilience Fund
Projects that advance recovery and resilience work in the disaster-prone regions of
Türkiye. Murat’s research focuses on understanding the root causes of disasters and
developing resilient urban futures. His areas of focus include earthquakes and the
anthropology of disasters, housing inequality, mega-projects and urban
infrastructures, social policy, and wealth and income inequality.
Murat received his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. He has taught
courses in the anthropology departments at Istanbul University, Özyeğin University,
and Boston University. He also collaborated on international research projects on
housing inequality as a postdoctoral researcher at the City Institute at York
University.
Murat is the author of "Earthquake, Disaster Capitalism and Massive Urban
Transformation in Istanbul" (The Geographical Journal, 2024). He is also the editor
of the books Massive Suburbanization: (Re)Building the Global Periphery (co-edited
with Roger Keil and Murat Üçoğlu, University of Toronto Press, 2019) and Başka
Dünyalar Mümkün (Other Worlds are Possible – Varlık Publishing House, 2007), and
the science-fiction and cultural criticism journal Davetsiz Misafir (The Uninvited
Guest).

Architecture, Salvaging the city
Zurich/Istanbul

As an artist and architect based between Winterthur (CH) and Istanbul (TR), I work on critical design, participatory projects, and installations from a material-driven perspective. I frequently use architectural elements, found materials, and diverse media to recreate the spatial experience of a place. At the core of my critical narrative is mass urbanisation and its effect on material culture. As an urban researcher, I am interested in social infrastructures within both rural and urban contexts. My research is based on an ethnographic investigation of informal scrap collectors — çıkmacılar — who salvage building components and materials from condemned buildings in Istanbul for reuse and recycling purposes.

historical urbanist, cultural worker

His background is in social and economic history, as well as art and architectural history. He is a passionate Istanbulite currently based in Berlin. His civic engagement in the urban struggles of his home city led him to focus on historical urbanism. He works as a freelance researcher and author and organizer of academic programs and excursions on diverse issues in urban studies, including urban ecology, governance, culture, mobility, resilience, as well as built environment and informality. His own research and writing focuses on the trajectory of Istanbul as a spatial-political process.

Sinan Logie graduated from the Free University of Brussels, Victor Horta Faculty of Architecture in 1998.

He had his first architectural experiences at L'Escaut Architectures, one of the most progressive offices in Belgium.

Logie, who settled in Istanbul in 2011, has been teaching undergraduate studios at Bilgi University since 2013, in addition to his architecture and art researches.

His book titled "Istanbul 2023", written together with Yoann Morvan and discussing the urban sprawl, was published by B2 Publishing in Paris in the fall of 2014. The Turkish version of the book was presented to readers by İletişim Publishing House in 2017. Their joint book with the same author, "Méga Istanbul", was finalized in 2019, published by Cavalier Bleu, Paris. This last book was the final stage of Morvan and Logie's six-year investigation on the fringes of the megalopolis.

In addition to his academic and artistic practice, in recent years Logie has also been experimenting in the field of music. He has performed with different music collectives such as Ha Za Vu Zu, Dolapdere Noise Orkestra and İlk Zamanlar, in institutions and venues such as SALT Beyoğlu, Arka Oda (Kadıköy), Karga and Hara.

Urban Geography, Istanbul