Baykal Büyüksaraç, Güldem

Istanbul Üniversitesi

Research Title: Being in The Landscape: Claims to Land, Heritage, and Livelihood in Southwest Rural Turkey

Dr. Baykal Büyüksaraç is an assistant professor of anthropology at Istanbul University. She holds a PhD from Columbia University, an MA (Sociology), and double BA degrees (Psychology and Sociology) from Boğaziçi University. She worked as a Core Curriculum instructor at Columbia College (2007–2008) and as a postdoctoral research fellow at George Washington University (2011–2012). She has published on minority politics, diasporic nationalism, the politics of urban space, and more recently on heritage tourism. Her co-edited book (with Derya Özkan), Commoning the City, is under contract with Routledge and planned for publication in late 2019. As a senior research fellow at ANAMED (2019–2020), Büyüksaraç is working on her book manuscript, tentatively titled, Being in The Landscape: Claims to Land, Heritage, And Livelihood in Southwest Rural Turkey. Her manuscript is based on the ethnographic research she has conducted among the rural communities located in the ancient region of Pisidia (Antalya province), where there is an overlap between natural and cultural heritage interventions. In this research, Büyüksaraç explores contested understandings and constructions of “heritage,” by analyzing how different actors (village communities, local and national administrators, heritage specialists, private investors) engage in the ideological, experiential, and material production of cultural and natural landscapes.