Deniz Duruiz, PhD

Biography

Deniz Duruiz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. Her research has focused on Kurdish migrant farmworkers and Syrian refugees in Turkey and in France. Between 2009-2016, she conducted twenty months of combined ethnographic research both in the hometowns of the migrant workers in Bakur (Northern Kurdistan) and in twelve different rural worksites (farms, greenhouses, charcoal production, public landscaping) in western Turkey. She also worked as a volunteer coordinator of international medical NGOs at the Syrian border of Turkey during the mass exodus of Syrian refugees into Turkey in 2014 and 2015. Presently, she is working on her book manuscript, which examines how political violence and the racialization of Kurds and Syrians transformed the migrant labor regime in rural Turkey. She is also working on a comparative ethnographic research project that explores the refugee experience in France and Canada with a focus on labor.

Before coming to Concordia, Duruiz worked as a visiting fellow at McGill University (2021-2022) and a visiting professor at the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton University (Winter 2022). She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program at Northwestern University (2018-2021). She is the creator and the host of the Keyman Podcast and the co-organizer of The Colloquium on Refugees, Migrants and Statelessness at Northwestern University. She has a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University and graduate degrees both in sociology and in anthropology.

Her research and teaching interests include 

• migration and refugees

• ethnicity, race, and racialization

• racial capitalism 

• work and labor 

• political economy of war and violence

• gender and kinship 

• psychoanalysis

• affect theory

Courses:

SOCI/ANTH 498 Global Migrations and Immobilities (Fall 2022, Winter 2025)

SOCI/ANTH 483 Nationalism and Racism (Winter 2023)

SOCI 622 Studies in Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2023)

SOCI 333 Political Sociology(Winter 2024)

SOCI/ANTH 230 Race and Ethnic Relations (Winter 2024)

ANTH 601 Decolonizing Anthropology (Winter 2025)

Research in Migration

I am affiliated with the IRMS (Institute for Research on Migration and Society) at Concordia University and I am directing a student-run podcast called Migrant Ethnographies, which provides graduate students an opportunity to showcase their work. I am also a co-investigator in the multi-university research grant the Groupe de recherche sur les conditions modernes des réfugiés (GRCMR) run by the members of McGill Refugee Research Group funded by Quebec's main social science research body, Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC).

Migrant Ethnographies Podcast

Through stories, practices, and grounded theories, Migrant Ethnographies podcast explores the lived realities of migration and the evolving journey of ethnographic research. Each podcast episode is recorded by a Concordia University graduate student who works on a topic related to migration, with guidance from Dr. Deniz Duruiz.

Migrant Ethnographies emphasizes qualitative research methods and ethnography and features conversations with the authors of recently published work and reflections on the research processes for ongoing projects on migration. Our guests include academics, graduate and undergraduate research assistants, community activists, artists, musicians, and other researchers who employ ethnographic and qualitative research methods. As is often the case with ethnographic work, the podcast goes beyond a simple description of experiences and events, incorporating theory and analysis presented in accessible language for a broader public audience.

The title, Migrant Ethnographies, reflects both ethnographies centered on migrants and the evolving journey of an ethnographic project as it migrates through different phases, from planning and research to writing and public dissemination.

The project is funded by Concordia University’s Faculty Research Development Program and hosted at the Institute for Research on Migration and Society (IRMS) at Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke, Montréal. Tiohtià:ke is located in unceded Indigenous lands and has historically served as a meeting place for many First Nations. The members of the Kanien’kehá:ka nation are the custodians of this land.

If you are a graduate student at Concordia University, and you would like to record an episode, please reach out to Dr. Duruiz at deniz.duruiz@concordia.ca

If you are a listener, we would love to hear from you! Share your comments, ideas, or proposals at migrantethnographies@gmail.com

You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Spreaker.

Publications

(forthcoming)  Duruiz, Deniz. "Racialized Labor Intermediation: Managing the ‘Threat’ of Kurdish Workers on Turkish Farms" American Anthropologist.

2024                Duruiz, Deniz. Review of The Mother, the Politician, and the Guerilla: Women’s Political Imagination in the Kurdish Movement, by Nazan Üstündağ. Political and Legal Anthropology Review, October 4, 2024. (link)

2023                 Duruiz, Deniz. Review of Gendered Fortunes: Divination, Precarity, and Affect in Postsecular Turkey, by Zeynep K. Korkman. American Anthropologist, October 9, 2023. (link)

2023                  Duruiz, Deniz. “I Would Have Recognized You from Your Smell”: Racialization of Kurdish Migrant Farmworkers in Western Turkey” 2023. Kurds in Dark Times: New Perspectives on Violence and Resistance eds. Ayça Alemdaroğlu and Müge Göçek, Syracuse University Press.

2022                 Duruiz, Deniz. Review of Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey by Salih Can Açıksöz. Social Anthropology, March 3, 2022. (link)

2021                “Erasure and Affect in Race-Making in Turkey” POMEPS Journal, September 2021

2020                “Tracing the Conceptual Genealogy of Kurdistan as an International Colony” Middle East Report 295 (Summer 2020)

2020                 “The Kurds: A Stateless People, Turkey’s Enemies, or the Colonized Other?”, Ethnographic Explainers, PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review Online.

2015                  “Embodiment of Space and Labor: Kurdish Migrant Workers in Turkish Agriculture” in Spatial Dimensions of the Kurdish Issue in Turkey eds. Zeynep Gambetti and Joost Jongerden. Routledge. 2015. pp 289-309

2013                  “Seasonal farm workers: Pitiful Victims or Kurdish Laborers Demanding Equality (Part II)” Perspectives: Political Analyses and Commentary from Turkey. No.4 April 2013 pp. 44-50

2012                  “Seasonal farm workers: Pitiful Victims or Kurdish Laborers Demanding Equality (Part I)” Perspectives: Political Analyses and Commentary from Turkey. No.3 December 2012 pp. 32-37 

2009                  “Söke Ovası’nda Kimlik Müzakereleri” (Negotiations of Identity on the Söke Plain), Birikim, No.247, (2009) pp.74-8