Elif Babül

she/her

  • Associate Professor of Anthropology
  • Nexus Track Chair for Law, Public Policy, and Human Rights
  • on leave academic year 24-25
Elif Babul

Elif Babül is a political and legal anthropologist who specializes in national and transnational bureaucracies, migration management, and the politics of human rights in Turkey. Her research has been funded by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the American Research Institute in Turkey. Her work has appeared in the American Ethnologist, Political and Legal Anthropology Review, New Perspectives on Turkey, Social Anthropology, and the Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, in addition to several edited volumes in Turkish and English.

Her book , published in 2017 by Stanford University Press, won the 2018 William A. Douglass Prize for the best book in Europeanist Anthropology; and received an honorable mention in the 2019 AAA Middle East Section biennial book award competition. Based on extensive field research over two years, the book traces Turkey’s legal and governmental “harmonization” with the European Union (EU) by focusing on a key site of bureaucratic reform – human rights education for Turkish government workers. Contrary to the belief that EU accession is a linear progressive path for the advancement of human rights and democracy, Babül’s research shows that harmonization is in fact a much more ambivalent process that incites professional governmental workers to adhere to human rights, all the while bringing the bureaucratization of human rights standards and countering the radical transformative force of grassroots activism in the country.

Currently, Babül is working on the intersection of migration management and the legal-juridical field in Turkey, exploring how the judiciary emerges as a site to both administer the government policy on migration, as well as clean up the messes that arise from discrepancies between official policy, institutional practices, and government rhetoric. Her research traces the consequences of the newly reformed legal-administrative framework for migration management through the cases that arrive in administrative, criminal, and family courts.

Babül is also co-editing a volume on "Fact and Fabulation: Knowledge in the Era of Post-Truth" that investigates how anthropologists can map a nuanced spectrum of responses to contemporary discussions of reality, truth, factuality, and evidence invoked by what is considered to be a global wave of “post-truth.” 

At Mount Holyoke, Babül teaches classes in political and legal anthropology, anthropology of human rights, ethnographic research methods and writing, Middle Eastern societies and cultures, and Muslim minorities in Europe and the U.S.

Areas of Expertise

Political and legal anthropology, anthropology of the state, transnational standardization, politics of human rights, migration management, citizenship and national belonging, gender and nationalism, Turkey and the Middle East.

Education

  • Ph.D., Stanford University
  • M.A., Boğaziçi University
  • B.A., Ankara University

Happening at Mount Holyoke

Recent Campus News

A new book by the Mount Holyoke professor wins the William E. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology.

Recent Grants

Received a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for the workshop, “Knowledge, Facts and Evidence in Anthropology in the Era of ‘Post-Truth,’” to take place over three days in August 2022 at Mount Holyoke.

Fellowship from the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) with support provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the project “Oppressive Generosity, Compulsory Guesthood, and the Politics of Hospitality in Turkey.” The project is for six months.

Recent Publications

Babül, E.M. (2023), Compulsory guesthood, social cohesion, and the politics of hospitality in Turkey. Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute.

Babul, E. M. (n.d.). Review Essay: Legal Occupations. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. Retrieved October 27, 2021, from .

Babül, E., Davis, M. H., Barnes, J., & Lubin, A. (Eds.). (2021, August 4). Race-Legacies and Challenges. MERIP. .

and (2021, February 23). Boğaziçi Resists Authoritarian Control of the Academy in TurkeyMiddle East Report Online.

Alemdaroğlu, A., Babül, E., Keshavarzian, A., Al-Tikriti, N. (eds.) (2020) Kurdistan, One and Many, Middle East Report 295 (Summer 2020).

Recent Awards

Babül's book Bureaucratic Intimacies (Stanford University Press, 2017) received an honorable mention in the 2019 Biennial Book Award given by the Middle East section of the American Anthropological Association.

Babül's book “Bureaucratic Intimacies: Translating Human Rights in Turkey” (Stanford University Press, 2017), was awarded the William E. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology by the Society for the Anthropology of Europe. The award is given to the best book published in the past year.

Recent Honors

Was invited to speak in a panel organized by the London School of Economics and Political Science Human Rights Center on “Defending Academic Autonomy in Turkey,” which took place on April 28, 2021. 

Was recently interviewed by Voices of the Middle East and North Africa on KPFA Radio of Berkeley, CA about government assault on higher education in Turkey. The interview was aired in two parts and can be found here: Part I () & Part II ().

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