Ayşe Durakoğlu

Ayşe is a doctoral student in cultural anthropology and a Fulbright Foreign Student Ph.D. grantee from Turkey. She earned a B.A. (2016) and an M.A. (2019) in political science from Bilkent University and an M.S. in Asian studies (2021) from Middle East Technical University. She also took social anthropology training at Ankara University in Turkey and studied at Korea University in Seoul, South Korea, as an exchange student.

Ayşe's academic interests include anthropology of tourism and place, production of local authenticities and cultural heritage, alongside political ecology and food anthropology in Turkey. Her dissertation research focuses on local people's experiences of "slow city" (cittaslow) branding of Seferihisar, a small town in the Aegean coast of Turkey. Through her fieldwork in this first cittaslow of the country, she aims to gain a better understanding of how this international slow city philosophy materializes (and is being challenged) in the promotion of local food and cuisine, rapidly growing tourism sector, and local government policies in Seferihisar.

Ayşe's earlier work includes her master's thesis on the statues in downtown Eskişehir, Turkey with focus on neoliberal urban policies and westernizing modernization projects of the metropolitan municipality through the organization of urban space. Her work also includes prize-winning research on South Korea's utilization of public diplomacy during COVID-19 with focus on the utilization of smart city technologies and policies in the country.