MiReKoc Seminar Series continues with Anna Zadrożna’s talk on ‘Senses and belonging: circulation of foods among migrants from Macedonia’.  The presentation and discussion will take place on Wednesday, November 1st, 2017, at 12:00 pm, in SOS77. Registration is required for participants not affiliated with Koç University.

Title: Senses and belonging: circulation of foods among migrants from Macedonia

Abstract: Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in and between Turkey and Macedonia with the support of TÜBİTAK, this talk scrutinizes ‘paketčinja’ – parcels of foods and other commodities – as polysemic carriers of meanings carried out between family members and close friends across the borders. Food items sent among dispersed family members become carriers of love and care. As sensory triggers of an embodied past they evoke memories and imaginations of home and homeland, of landscape, family or nation. What does the sensory experience of foods brought from Macedonia tell about “identity” of migrants in Turkey?

Key words: identity, landscape, senses, food, migration.

Bio 

Anna Zadrożna is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Oslo. Her research is focused on transnational migration, gender, identity, state-individual relations, Islam in Europe, Turkey and Macedonia, and has been published in book chapters and articles inNationalities Papers and Anthropological Journal of European Cultures. She was an affiliate visiting researcher at the University College London and the University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje, and held a Tübitak-Bideb fellowship at Yeditepe University in Istanbul. A graduate of University of Warsaw and Warsaw University of Life Sciences, she also worked as a researcher for the Polish Ministry of Science and Education projects.