#  Onur Günay 

 

 



   ![Onur%20Gunay.jpg](/sites/g/files/omnuum4936/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/Onur%2520Gunay_6.jpg?itok=pAyRVstl) 

 



 





 

Onur Günay holds a PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University (2017). His book project, Becoming Kurdish: Migration, Urban Labor, and Political Violence in Turkey, examines the processes by which displaced Kurdish migrants become urban laborers in Istanbul. Based on two years of fieldwork with Kurdish migrant workers in the service and construction sectors of Istanbul’s labor economy, his research shows how ethnic and cultural differences are recast through labor, as these differences mark migrant Kurdish men’s bodies, sexualities, life prospects, and senses of belonging in the city. His writing foregrounds how Kurdish migrant workers articulate their understandings of self, community, and rights in relation to their struggles for economic survival and social mobility—all this in the context of dramatic economic restructuring and the rise of political Islam in Turkey. Onur’s work as a filmmaker is integral to his work as anthropologist and storyteller of the lives of his informants. His last documentary, Garod [Longing], made with ethnomusicologist Burcu Yıldız, portrays the lives and the musical stories of two Armenian American musicians using their trip to the family’s lost hometown of Diyarbakır as the central narrative arc. Garod focuses on the remaking of a musical tradition and explores the ways in which the Armenian community in the United States coped with pain and loss through music and art.

 

 

 





 

 

- ## Discipline
    
     [Anthropology](/discipline/anthropology)
- ## Fellowship
    
     [Postdoctoral](/fellowship/postdoctoral)
- ## Fellowship Year
    
     [2017 - 2018](/fellowship-year/2017-2018)
- ## Role
    
     [Fellows](/role/fellow)