Gökçen B. Dinç
Postdoctoral Researcher Religious Studies,Utrecht University
Year of birth: 1976
Current position: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Utrecht University
Past positions: Gerda Henkel and TÜBİTAK Postdoctoral Researcher, Hamburg University, PhD Researcher, Humboldt University-Berlin
Personal Profile:
Dr. Gökçen Beyinli-Dinç has joined Utrecht University, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies in February 2025. She holds a PhD in History from Humboldt University-Berlin (2017), and an MA in History from Istanbul Bilgi University. She is the author of two books on the history of midwifery and of “folk religion” in Turkish modernity, and of several articles on gender and religious history of Istanbul and modern Turkey. She has a keen interest in postcolonial and “global religious history” as well as lived and material approach to religion, which she developed during her postdoctoral studies and she is currently engaged in further research into the history of religion in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire along this line of enquiry. Her current project investigates the history of Turkey in terms of religion, rather than Islam, to understand the roots of the normative understanding of religiosity as Sunni-Islamic. The aim is to comprehend the Western influence on religion and Islam in Turkey and to illuminate the history of material forms of religiosity by focusing on Hıdrellez, a religious practice that was, and still is, celebrated in a convivial manner by people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. Situated at the intersection of religious studies and history, this project will bring together a postcolonial history of “superstition” with the historical analysis of “material religion”, and will advance global debates on how religion is discussed today through its critique of essentialist definitions of Muslim majority nations.
Recent scholarly papers/books:
Articles in Journals
2022. “Reframing Turkey, Istanbul and National Identity: Ottoman History, ‘Chosen People’ and the Opening of Shrines in 1950”, Nations and Nationalism, 28(4), 1428–1443.
2019. “At Liberty under Occupation but Bound Hand and Foot in the Republic: Istanbul Women, Corruption and Moral Decay after the First World War (1918–1923), International Journal of Regional and Local History, Vol. 15, Issue 2, p. 94-109.
Books
2023. Elleri Tılsımlı: Modern Türkiye’de Ebelik, 4th edition. Istanbul: Alfa Kitap.
2021. İslam ve Sair Halk: Laik Türkiye’de Hurafeler, Türbeler, Kadınlar. Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi.
Chapters in edited volumes
2025. “‘Ortodoks İslam’ın İnşası: Cumhuriyet Tarihinde Hurafe, ‘Heterodoks’ Aleviler ve Halk İslamı”, in Türkiye’de Din-Siyaset İlişkilerinin ve Laikliğin 100 Yılı, ed. Umut Azak. Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı.
2023. “Küresel Dinler Tarihi ve Türkiye ile “Batı”nın Etkileşimi: Wilfred Cantwell Smith Örneği”, in 1. Dinler Tarihi Kongresi Bildiri Kitabı II. Cilt, edited by Durmuş Arık. Ankara Üniversitesi Yayınevi, p. 115-126.
2018. “Superstition, Folk Religion and Childbirth: Highlighting the World of Informal Midwives in Modern Turkey”, in Sacred Inception: Reclaiming the Spirituality of Birth in the Modern World, ed. Morag Martin, Marianne Delaporte. Lanham: Lexington Books, p. 41-56.