Azmi Recep Özdaş | Local on-site Group, Berlin/Germany

Since September 2019, Azmi Recep Özdaş is a PhD student at the Otto Suhr Institute of the Freie Universität Berlin/Germany (Department of Political Science).

“Before moving Berlin in 2018, I was working as a research assistant in the Graduate School of Social Science Institute at Anadolu University, Turkey. Shortly after my bachelor graduation in 2010, I worked around 3 years in different fields; I then completely changed my life and became a student and researcher to fulfill my ambition to study sociology. Because of this strong commitment and interest, I have completed my master degree in sociology at Anadolu University with high honor degree. During my master, I got various courses, many of which are combination of theoretical discussions and fieldwork. In addition to these courses, I gained remarkable fieldwork experience within far-reaching group projects, including both qualitative and quantitative methods on the subject of political sociology, spatial segregation, memory, gender and daily life sociology.

Following my master degree in sociology, I began to study for PhD degree where I examined sociology via practical studies and discussions on some social problems in Middle East and Turkey. When I worked for this department, I also organized some lectures in Open Education Faculty for the courses “Introduction to Ethics and Introduction to Sociology.” Since I have experienced different disciplines and also taken courses on various subjects, I gained broader perspective and knowledge that are crucial especially for social scientists. This perspective reflects on my master thesis that is the combination of micro and macro sociology within the base of ‘space’. The thesis, which mainly discusses the concept of social space, combines theoretical discussions and offers the term ‘spatial consciousness’ as a tool to get the awareness of social status. That is why I find the participation in the LIVING MEMOIAL project precious for me as it will enrich my academic and art-practical daily life experience basing on art praxis of memory. As I always believe in the holistic approaches in the social sciences, instead of some postmodern multi-inter disciplinary approaches I recommended a proposal which has some unique and fresh terms used by me: political topology and memory as space. Even if I care about the intersectionality as a current path in social science, my proposal deals with space as a social transection where we can find memory, race, gender and especially class as very important momentums to understand wider political and economic scales within the current democracy crisis of liberal philosophy reproducing global capitalist economy. Therefore, I wanted to connect memory, sociology of space, gender and class to focus on politics, sociology and philosophy on a wider scale. I can admit that my proposal could be criticized because some weak points as not touching field study specifically. But I also want to create an open door to discuss and develop this point via collective knowledge production and inclusion. To sum up, I want to submit my proposal by internally focusing on the idea of superiority around theory by thinking of the lack of conceptualization crisis that I find crucial to focus on, within the current unproductive academic sphere. I would like to improve myself as well as my sociopolitical lenses as an agent and the participant on these subjects and continue to produce any form of art praxis knowledge. I have confidence in my ability to produce powerful, gripping practices for this seminar. Since the LIVING MEMORIAL project offers a wide range of perspectives in social science by merging them with art production and my studying interests in particular, I am motivated to be part of it as a determined agent-actor student for my commitment.”