Deniz (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore and member of the Center of Social Movement Studies (COSMOS). Her current research focuses on the manifold engagements with modern sports ethics on the transnational field of LGBTQIA+ football activism. She has earned her BA in Psychology and MA in Sociology at the University of Boğaziçi where she also worked as a research assistant. Following that, she has attained another MA in Global Cultures Program in History and Oriental Studies at the University of Bologna.

For several years now, both in academic and activist environments, she works and writes on the sexuality politics on the football field and mobilization of queer athlete-activists for their right to sports. With her football team, they organize Queer Olympix, one of the largest public LGBTQIA+ events in today’s Turkey, since 2017. Carrying bodily repertoire of sports to the LGBTQIA+ activism with her playmates from all over the world, she intends to combine this rich repertoire of collective actions with the social movements literature.

Research interests: queer and feminist theories, field theory, contentious politics and social movements, and anthropology of sports