Curating Feminist Histories: Digital Archive and Media Narratives
This practice-based project examines how feminist movements in Turkey have mobilized digital media under conditions where civic documentation and archiving are often criminalized over the last three decades. Feminist groups have used audiovisual media to challenge gender-based violence, assert visibility, and build collective memory. Yet much of this digital material remains dispersed, vulnerable, and at risk of disappearance. The project aims to bring these fragments together, highlighting how media technologies shape feminist activism and safeguarding this history through a curated digital timeline.
Drawing on feminist media theory, intersectionality, digital ethnography, and data curation principles, the project will analyze and organize digital visual data spanning three decades of feminist activism in Turkey. It seeks to illuminate how media technologies influence feminist struggles and to amplify the voices of historically marginalized groups through alternative media historiography.
The primary output will be a publicly accessible digital timeline, with research findings disseminated through articles, conferences, workshops, and public media formats.
Main Research Topics
- Media Historiography
- Feminist Media Studies
- Media Activism
- Digital Archives
- Artistic/Practice-Based Research
Curriculum Vitae
- April – Sept 2025: Lecturer, University of Hildesheim, Institute for Media, Theatre and Popular Culture
- Sept 2024 – Sept. 2025: Lecturer, Mannheim University of Applied Sciences, Institute for Time-based Media
- March – July 2025: Digital Fellow, Akademie Schloss Solitude
- 2024 – Ongoing: Research Collaboration on Audiovisual Collection Building, International Institute of Social History (IISH), Amsterdam
- 2014 – Ongoing: Co-founder & Archivist, bak.ma – Online Media Archive of Social Movements, Turkey / International
Publications and Presentations
Book:
- Çelikaslan, Ö. (2024). Archiving the Commons: Looking Through the Lens of bak.ma. Barcelona: dpr-barcelona.
https://dpr-barcelona.com/archiving-the-commons-looking-through-the-lens-of-bak-ma/
Journal Articles:
- Çelikaslan, Ö., & Erensoy, Ş. F. (2024). It is never enough: Exploring the dynamics and aesthetics of enough through video archival testimonies. NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, 13(2), 55–80.
DOI: 10.25969/MEDIAREP/23678 - Erensoy, S. F., & Çelikaslan, Ö. (2024). Video Activism and Activist Archiving: Collective Testimonies, Resilient Images and the Case of bak.ma. Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal, 24(42), 85–100. https://doi.org/10.54103/2036-461X/21893
Presentations:
- Çelikaslan, Ö. (2024). Unveiling Hidden Narratives in the Endangered Media Archival Collections from Turkey. Paper presented at the Radical Film Network International Conference: Archives of Radical Cinema, Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain. 19-22.06.2024.
- Çelikaslan, Ö. (2022). Digital Feminist Activism and Media: A New Research Methodology for New Media, Internet-based Research. Seminar presented in the Feminist Research Methodologies and Digital Feminist Research Program, The New School, New University in Exile Consortium. 05.12.2022.