
Dr Uygar Baspehlivan
PhD in Politics, MSc in International Relations Theory, BA in International Relations
Expertise
Current positions
Honorary Research Associate
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
Contact
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Research interests
My research critically examines how everyday circulation of digital media transforms the contours of global politics and wider processes of political subjectivity. In particular, I question how internet memes, as novel media phenomena, shape ordinary political subjects' encounters and interactions with global structures of power such as capitalism, racism, and state-authority. Conceptually, I am curious about how enjoyment, desire, and humour play a fundamental role in contemporary media processes and medial formations of subjectivity. Empirically, my research has so far considered phenomena including far-right reactionary politics, politics of anti-capitalist resistance, and Turkish digital politics. My research draws from an interdisciplinary range of theoretical resources including critical international relations, media and cultural theory, critical geography, affect theory, psychoanalysis, and critical political economy.
My new research project, titled 'This is Fine: Digital Aesthetics of Global Collapse', pivots to environmental and nuclear politics of the future and seeks to dissect how contemporary digital cultures affectively reckon with and aesthetically engage with the future possibility of global collapse and what these medial productions tell us about our contemporary crisis formation and its subjective resonances.
Publications
Selected publications
08/03/2023Theorising the memescape: The spatial politics of Internet memes
Review of International Studies
Disciplinary Seriousness in International Relations
Global Studies Quarterly
Cucktales
International Political Sociology
Recent publications
02/03/2025Ordinary affects of global reactionary politics
Critical Studies on Security
Cucktales
International Political Sociology
Disciplinary Seriousness in International Relations
Global Studies Quarterly
Theorising the memescape: The spatial politics of Internet memes
Review of International Studies
'Repeat after me!': child's play, immaturity and resistance
Critical Studies on Security
Thesis
Meme-ing Global Politics
Supervisors
Award date
10/12/2024