Aslı Vatansever, At the Margins of Academia: Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity. Leiden: Brill 2020. ISBN: 978-90-04-43134-8; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004431355

Are displaced and emigrated academics “at risk” or “in reserve”? Are political oppression of dissident scholars and economic precarization of academic workforce separate phenomena, or two sides of the same coin? Can the pervasive precariousness in its various forms foster a conversation on shared sensibilities? And, can traumatic experiences like exile and loss eventually lead to a revival of agency?

Based on the author’s own experiences and on in-depth interviews with the exiled Peace Academics, At the Margins of Academia offers a broad approach to the challenge of academic labor precarity and the growing academic migration from Turkey to European academic labor markets. It provides a detailed analysis of the systemic background of precariousness and the socio-emotional expressions of being kept in reserve, in conjunction with the antinomies of exile.

Aslı Vatansever, Dr. rer. pol. (2010, University of Hamburg) is research fellow at Institute Re:Work, HU Berlin. Her books include Ursprünge des Islamismus im Osmanischen Reich (Hamburg: Dr. Kovac, 2010) and Ne Ders Olsa Veririz. Akademisyenin Vasıfsız İşçiye Dönüşümü (Ready to Teach Anything, Istanbul: Iletisim, 2015 – co-authored).