Sehrazat G. Mart

Şehrazat is a Ph.D. candidate in the joint Peace Studies and Sociology program with an expected graduation date of May 2024. She holds an M.A. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame and B.A. degrees in sociology and political science & international relations from Bogazici University (Turkey). She pursues two research agendas that center on questions of power, inclusion, and social change, with particular attention to practical applications of her findings.

First, she interrogates political, cultural, and organizational factors that shape social movement mobilization and outcomes under authoritarian state repression in Turkey. Her dissertation, titled “At What Cost? The Strategic and Moral Dilemmas of Anti-Authoritarian Struggle,” is currently at the center of this research agenda. In this work, she examines how intergenerational and contemporary influences shape young activists’ strategic and moral evaluations of risk-taking in social justice activism. Through the case of a recent high-profile student movement in Turkey that unexpectedly split into two camps, she shows how intergenerational storytelling shapes pathways to political action and activism strategies. Previously, she investigated how protests impact public service responsiveness in the implementation of housing and disaster preparation policies in authoritarian regimes, focusing on urban transformation projects affecting ethnic and religious minorities in Turkey. Şehrazat's work has been published in Foreign Policy, showcasing the importance of her findings for understanding authoritarian policy-making and implementation.

Secondly, she investigates patterns of gatekeeping, political interest, and representation in knowledge production and dissemination both in multi-sectoral transnational fields and academia. As part of this agenda, she co-authored an article on inequality in academic publication structures in the Journal of Peace Research. She also co-authored an article on the role of political interest in creating and disseminating future narratives of sociopolitical change, which has been invited for revision and resubmission to Time & Society. Her ongoing work includes an examination of how classical sociological theory classes impact graduate students’ belonging and development within Sociology. These studies highlight her commitment to fostering inclusion and equity in academic spaces.

Şehrazat was a 2018-2019 Mullen Family Fellow. Her research has been funded by the Kroc Institute, Kellogg Institute, Nanovic Institute, and Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at Notre Dame. Her research was also awarded an honorable mention by the Graduate Women in Science National Fellowship Program. In 2021, she received the “Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher Award” from the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence.