Miray Cakiroglu

Bio

Miray Cakiroglu is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Anthropology, Stanford University. She is currently conducting fieldwork on non-Muslim property in Turkey, with particular attention to the current figurations of the temporality of transition from the empire to the nation-state and the more-than-legal sociopolitical domain that infiltrates past and present articulations of ownership. Miray has focused on the scene of acquisition, use, confiscation, claim, and return involving non-Muslim property, specifically those owned by Rum foundations in contemporary Istanbul. Following the major earthquakes of 2023 in southern Turkey, Miray has extended her focus to understanding how property relations might be articulated in stark ways with loss, especially for the Arabic-speaking Christian Orthodox community in the Antakya region.

Miray has two poetry books published in Turkey. She also translated Philip Larkin’s Whitsun Weddings into Turkish. Most recently, she collaborated with ten other women poets in a volume of documentary poetry.

Miray holds an M.A. degree in Near Eastern Studies from the Hagop Kevorkian Center at New York University and Critical and Cultural Studies from Bogazici University, Turkey. She received her B.A. from Bogazici University, Department of Western Languages and Literatures, with a double major in Philosophy.

Education & Certifications

• B.A., Bogazici University, English Literature ( double major in Philosophy) (2010)
• M.A., Bogazici University, Critical and Cultural Studies (2014)
• M.A., New York University, Near Eastern Studies (2018)