Gurur Ertem
(Istanbul)
Dr. Gurur Ertem is a sociologist, dancer, and dance/performance studies scholar. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology from The New School for Social Research (New York) with the thesis “EUropean Dance: The Emergence and Transformation of a Contemporary Dance Art World (1989-2013).” She has been immersed in the contemporary dance culture for two decades as a dancer, dramaturge, scholar, educator, and curator. Ertem curated the iDANS Festival for Contemporary Dance and Performance (Istanbul 2006-2014) and edited several books on dance such as “Dance on Time” (2010), “Solo? In Contemporary Dance” (2008), and “Yirminci Yüzyılda Dans Sanatı” (2007). At present, she researches and writes on politics of/with the body and the affective and aesthetic enunciations of the “political” with a focus on recent social movements and corporeal resistance. Her recent publications include “Bodies of Evidence: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Politics of Movement” (co-edited with Sandra Noeth, Passagen, 2018), “Gezi Uprising: Performative Democracy and Politics of the Body in an Extended Space of Appearance” (in “Media Practices, Social Movements, and Performativity”; Routledge, 2018). Ertem’s trans-disciplinary work combines the arts, social, and political theory. She is the recipient of the Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for her project “The Exilic Condition and the Arts,” hosted by Freie Universität (Berlin, 2020-2021).
