"Every time I come to Innsbruck, I have a routine of eating good food and having picturesque walks, listening to very good concerts, visiting the University, meeting some new people."

 

Innsbruck for me is ...

...a familiar yet an exciting city. I have been to Innsbruck many times before I came here for this research and teaching period at the University of Innsbruck. By now, every time I come to Innsbruck, I have a routine of eating good food and having picturesque walks, listening to very good concerts, visiting the University, meeting some new people. Every time it is exciting to come back. This time I am particularly excited to spend some time at the University of Innsbruck as a researcher and to meet new colleagues, to teach new students and to learn more from the city and everyone I will meet.

 

At the University of Innsbruck I will...

...teach a graduate seminar course called “Migration and Design”. Migration and Design course consists of a series of weekly seminars to discuss the material and visual culture of migration, through the analysis of commodities, visuals, places and objects migrants use in their new country of residence or transport to their country of origin as gifts or for their own use. I would like to encourage utilizing the narrative capabilities of things to look at migration through various material examples under thematic titles like “home”, “gift”, “death” to evaluate the life and biography of the migrant with the life and biography of the designed artifacts. I aim to encourage a discussion on how a design perspective for looking at transnational migration can contribute to the disciplines of European Ethnology, Contemporary History, Literature Studies and Migration Studies.

 

The University of Innsbruck is different from my home institution...

...in the areas of the expertise of the people I work with. At my university I work at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Design where many of my colleagues come from various design backgrounds. At the University of Innsbruck, I am at the Department of History and European Ethnology where my colleagues have different backgrounds and this is a very refreshing perspective for me to work together and to exchange ideas with my colleagues at the University of Innsbruck. One more difference is also on how to faculties of the University of Innsbruck are spread to different neighbourhoods in the city where in Izmir I work at a campus university where all faculties are in one central campus.

 

From Innsbruck I will take home with me...

...hopefully new friendships and collaborations, a refreshed perspective to my research and teaching and a lot of good memories of rich experiences. And as a researcher working on transnational objects and migrant gifts I will take some objects and gifts with me.