Ayten Gündoğdu
Ayten Gündoğdu is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Barnard College-Columbia University. Her research lies at the intersection of modern and contemporary European political theory, the political thought of Hannah Arendt, international political and legal theory, critical human rights studies, and migration studies. She is the author of Rightlessness in an Age of Rights (Oxford University Press, 2015), which offers a critical inquiry of human rights by engaging with the works of twentieth-century political theorist Hannah Arendt and by examining the contemporary rights struggles of asylum-seekers, refugees, and undocumented immigrants. Professor Gündoğdu is currently at work on a new book that aims to understand the regime of impunity surrounding migrant deaths by foregrounding two key dimensions of this problem: racialized vulnerability to lethal violence at the borders of states and the complicity of law in the justification of this violence. Professor Gündoğdu is the recipient of several awards and grants, including the Tow Professorship for Distinguished Scholars (2019-21), Heyman Center Fellowship from Columbia University (2018-19), Mellon Mid-Career Fellowship from the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University (2017-18), and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University (2011-12).