Ebru Ustundag

(On sabbatical leave July 2012 to June 2013)

Associate Professor
Department of Geography
Faculty of Social Sciences
Office: Mackenzie Chown, C-block, Room 314
Brock University
E-mail: eustundag@brocku.ca
Phone: 905-688-5550, ext. 4417
Fax: 905-688-6369

*Core faculty member in the graduate program in Social Justice and Equity Studies.

Field

Urban Geography

Background

B.Sc. Political Science and Public Administration (Middle East Technical University), M.Sc. Urban Policy Planning and Local Governments (Middle East Technical University), Ph.D. Geography (York)

Research Interests

• Urban Geography
• Feminist Geographies
• Citizenship Studies
• Political Geography

Current Research Project

Witnessing Social Citizenship 

With the current socio-economic changes in global economy and their impacts on Niagara Region, there has been a sharp increase in the number of vulnerable groups who have been socially and spatially excluded. Based on a street-assessment conducted in St. Catharines, this paper explores an emerging agenda of geographies of social citizenship of outdoor female sex-workers in St. Catharines, Ontario. While the effects of current social and legal frameworks on the everyday practices of female sex workers have been already studied by various scholars, these studies lack spatial grounded analysis of social citizenship practices. Critical social and feminist geographers have underlined ‘particular ways of being situated within and responding to relations of power through which a community is governed and ruled’ (Chouinard 2009). These studies particularly emphasize how various social groups claim, articulate, exercise and contest social, political and civil rights, entitlements as well as obligations. Linking current debates in social citizenship and feminist geographies, this project offers a critical account of practices of social exclusion of outdoor female sex-workers in St. Catharines. By examining gender and sexuality as systems that also produce value (Wright 2004), the purpose of this project is to understand various intersections, assemblages and discourses of power relations in contesting practices of social citizenship in and through various material and political spaces of St. Catharines.   

More on Sex Work: Canadian Legal Challenges

http://www.niagarathisweek.com/news/article/653418--sex-work-is-real-wor...

Courses Taught: Undergraduate 

GEOG 1F90: Introduction to Human Geography

GEOG 3P53: Community Development and Social Planning

GEOG 3P66: Introduction to Urban and Regional Planning 

GEOG 4P46: Cities and Globalization

Courses Taught: Graduate 

SJES 5P25: Social Justice and the City

GEOG 5P50: Critical Geographies of the City

GEOG 5P70: Geographies of Inequality and Exclusion

Awards

Recipient of CTLET Best Practices Award (2010)

Selected Publications and Presentations

Isin, Engin and Ebru Ustundag. 2008. 'Wills, deeds, acts: women's civic gift-giving in Ottoman Istanbul' Gender, Place and Culture, 15(5): 519-532.

Ustundag, Ebru. 2008. Romani. In Acts of Citizenship edited by Engin F. Isin and Greg Nielson (pp: 215-217).

Ustundag, Ebru. 2007. ‘Topographies of Surveillance’ Istanbul . May, 78-81. {In Turkish}

Ustundag, Ebru. 2005. Rearticulating Space as a Political Strategy. International Geographical Union-Political Geography. ‘Rights to the City’ Conference Proceedings.

Preston Valerie and Ebru Ustundag (2004) ‘Feminist Geographies of the ‘City’: Multiple Voices and Multiple Meanings’ in Joni Seager eds Companion to Feminist Geography -Blackwell Publications.

Ustundag, Ebru. 2007. ‘Cartographies of the present: Limits and possibilities of Cosmopolitical Istanbul’ presented Annual Critical Geography Conference, Lexington, Kentucky.

Ustundag, Ebru. 2007.  ‘Architecture of Modern Subjects: Appropriations of Turkish Republican Citizenship’ presented at American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting.  San Francisco.

Ustundag, Ebru. 2007.  ‘Governing Citizens in Istanbul’ presented at Public Istanbul: Public Spaces and Spheres of the City. Weimar, Germany.

Ustundag, Ebru. 2007.  ‘‘Safe City’ as a ‘Democratic City’: The Paradox of Europeanness in Istanbul’ presented at Annual Critical Geography Conference, Columbus, Ohio.

Ustundag, Ebru. 2007. “Wills, Deeeds, Acts: Women and Waqfs in Ottoman Istanbul” Paper presented at Great Lakes Ottoman Workshop, Toronto.

Ustundag, Ebru. 2006. “Turkish Republican Citizenship and Rights to the City” Paper presented at Association for the Study of Nationalism Annual Meeting.

Participation in Community Affairs

Greater St. Catharines Community Health Centre, Member, Board of Directors (http://www.greaterstcatharineschc.org)