Begum Ergun

Matriculated September 2021

Research Interests

Care and politics of care; migration, displacement, and disaster studies; home and homemaking; health and mental health practices; subjectivity; affect and emotion; Middle East (and) Turkey; psychological, medical, and political anthropology.

About

Begüm’s research broadly explores the intertwined meanings and experiences of home, care, and belonging in the aftermath of displacement and disaster. Focusing on how the politics of care and care practices shape the everyday lives of Syrians in Turkey, her work examines the complex interactions between the nation-state, humanitarian aid organizations, and households. Through participatory visual methodologies, such as photography and ethnographic documentary-making, she collaborates with Syrian women to visually document their experiences of homemaking, food, and care.
Begüm’s work seeks to delve into the psychic, intersubjective, and material dimensions of displacement and disaster. Drawing from psychological, political, and medical anthropology, her scholarship reveals how political violence, disaster, and displacement materially and affectively reverberate through daily life as ongoing processes, rooted in people’s entangled relationships with past experiences, present realities, and imagined futures. Her research challenges conventional understandings of suffering by attending to the phenomenological and somatic experiences of displacement and by focusing on the narratives of those positioned as both subjects and abjects within care systems of home, nation, or humanitarian aid.
Before beginning her Ph.D. studies at Boston University, Begüm earned a B.A. in Psychology and Sociology from Koç University in Istanbul. Her academic pursuits are deeply informed by her experiences in civil society and activism in Turkey, where she engaged with issues affecting marginalized urban communities, education policies, collective memory, and historical consciousness.

Explore her personal website at begumergun.com

Awards & Grants (amounts redacted)

• Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (2024-2025).
• BU Long Term Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship (GRAF) (2024-2025).
• Society for Psychological Anthropology & Robert Lemelson Foundation Fellowship. (2022-2023)
• American Ethnological Society (AES) Summer Fieldwork Grant (2022)
• Boston University Dean’s Fellowship (Fall 2021, Spring 2022).

Publications

• Forthcoming