Oguz Alyanak, an anthropology doctoral student in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected for a Volkswagen Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities to support his research on the social lives of working-class Muslim men in Germany, France and other European countries.
The fellowship, designed to strengthen trans-Atlantic academic relations in the humanities, will allow Alyanak to continue his
On April 2, Alyanak successfully defended his research in a dissertation titled “Sinning Men, Sinful Places: Spatial Politics of Moral Transgressions in the Franco-German borderland.” The research also is chronicled in his 2018 documentary.
Alyanak’s doctoral research has been advised primarily by John Bowen, professor of sociocultural anthropology and the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences.
In 2014, he received a fellowship from the Social Science Research Council to undertake summer research in Turkey on a major point of origin for Turkish migrants in Europe, the highlands of Kayseri.
Additional university support for his research includes a first-year travel grant from the Department of Anthropology and other funding from the Divided Cities Initiative, the McDonnell International Scholars Academy and the Center for the Humanities, where he was a fellow in spring 2018.
Article originally published in The Source, April 11, 2019 | Media Contact: Gerry Everding