Berna Turam, Professor of Sociology at Northeastern University, is a political sociologist and ethnographer. Turam has an abiding interest in conducting research on state-society interaction, particularly the interaction between ordinary Muslims and secular states. She is its author Between Islam and the State: The Politics of Engagement (Stanford University Press, 2007), and Gaining Freedoms: Claiming Space in Istanbul and Berlin (Stanford University Press, 2015), and its editor Secular State and Religious Society: Two Forces at Play in Turkey (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). He wrote several articles in magazines including British Journal of Sociology, International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies, Journal of Urban Affairs, Journal of Democracy, and Nations and Nationalism. Turam is currently working on two major projects. First, he conducted multi-sited ethnography in host and refugee host cities in the Eastern and Central Mediterranean. Her field research in Athens, the Greek hotspot islands of Palermo and Lampedusa explores the politics of fear and security at the hyper-securitized borders between the Middle East and Southern Europe. In particular, her project reveals and analyzes the ways in which “sanctuary cities” in border regions create safe havens for Muslim refugees at the cost of resisting, confronting, and sometimes subverting Europe's anti-immigration regimes. Thuram is working on several articles and a follow-up book based on her ethnography of border securitization and migration. With comparative aims, she plans to continue the ethnography of the borders that large numbers of refugees cross between the Middle East and Europe. He works simultaneously with Dr. Idil Elveris in a research project on the role of the Turkish Bar Association and the legal profession in combating the freedom violations of the right-wing populist authoritarian regime in Turkey.
