Zeynep Oguz

ZEYNEP OGUZ, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, was awarded a Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship in October 2022 to aid research and writing on “Unsettling Grounds: Indeterminate Oil, State Power, and Earth Politics in Turkey.” This project supported the completion of “Unsettling Grounds: Indeterminate Oil, State Power, and Earth Politics in Turkey,” a book manuscript exploring how oil shapes state power, colonial governance, and everyday resistance in Turkey’s Kurdish region. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, the book traces how the uncertain presence of petroleum has fueled extractive ambition, nationalist mythmaking, and militarized infrastructure, while also generating acts of sabotage, informal negotiation, and refusal. The manuscript advances debates in anthropology and environmental humanities by theorizing the underground not as a passive resource, but as a volatile terrain of struggle and speculation. During the fellowship, four chapters were written or revised, and the complete manuscript was finalized and submitted to Duke University Press. A book workshop and professional editorial review further shaped the final draft. Additionally, two peer-reviewed articles based on the project were published: “Speculative Undergrounds” in Cultural Anthropology and “Managing Oil Theft” in the Journal of Cultural Economy.