Curriculum Vitae

 2020- Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Geography, Political Urbanism and Sustainable Spatial Development, University of Bern, Switzerland
 2019-2020 Research fellow, Brussels Center for Urban Studies / Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
September 2018- January 2019 Visiting Researcher, Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Switzerland
2015-2018   Lecturer and Senior Research Associate, The Ohio State University, Knowlton School of Architecture- City and Regional   Planning Section
2016 Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA 
2013-2015   Research Assistant, University of Illinois, Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL)
2011-2013   Teaching Assistant, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Finance
2009-2011   Teaching Assistant, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Economics
2008-2009   MSc. in Economics (Research), The London School of Economics and Political Science (Specialization in Development  Economics
2008 BA in Economics, Sabanci University, Turkey
2007-2008 Teaching and Research Assistant, Sabanci University, Turkey.

Research Interests

  • Commons
  • Care
  • Social policy
  • Urban renewal
  • Urban governance
  • Housing policy
  • Spatial justice

Publications

Bouwmeester, J., Hartmann, T., Ay, D., & Gerber, J. D. (2024). Making room for affordable housing: Project-based negotiations between planning authorities and landowners in Dutch and Swiss densification. Land Use Policy, 144, 107264. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2024.107264.

Care-Full Municipalisms to Mitigate the Social Reproduction Crisis at the Urban Scale, Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory Annual Conference. Istanbul, Turkey. 5-7 April 2024.

Decommodification of housing and commoning care: Potential of collective ownership in mitigating the care gap, PLPR (International Academic Association on Planning, Law, and Property Rights) Annual Conference. Munich, Germany. 19-22 March 2024. 

Ay, D. & Penpecioglu, M. (2023). Politics of “waiting for transformation” in protracted urban renewal projects in Turkey. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544231222138.

Verheij, J., Ay, D., Gerber, J-D., & Nahrath, S. (2023). Ensuring Public Access to Green Spaces in Urban Densification: The Role of Planning and Property Rights. Planning Theory & Practice, 24(3), 342-365. 

Bouwmeester, J., Gerber, J-D., Hartmann, T., and Ay, D. (2023). Non-compliance and non-enforcement: An unexpected outcome of flexible soft densification policy in the Netherlands. Land Use Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2022.106525.

Ay, D., Kaya-Tasdelen, D., Turker, K.A., and Soyukaya, N. (2022). The Character of Diyarbakir’s Surici Quarter is Changed from Residential to Commercial. IV. Historic Cities and Urban Ensembles, World Heritage Watch Report 2022, 197-201.

Ay, D., Turker, K.A. 2022. Post-conflict Urban Renewal as an Ethnocratic Regime Practice: Racialized Governance of Redevelopment in Diyarbakir, Turkey. Frontiers in sustainable cities, 4 Frontiers Media S.A. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsc.2022.880812.

Ay, D., Demires Ozkul, B. 2021. The strange case of earthquake risk mitigation in Istanbul. City, 25(1-2). 67-87. Taylor & Francis. https//doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2021.1885917.

Ay, D. 2021. Empowering Cities to Make Immigrant Integration Happen. In: Ilke, Adam; Tundé, Adefioy; D’Agostino, Serena; Schuermans, Nick; Trauner, Florian (ed.) Migration, equality & racism. VUBPRESS. 184-188.

Fischer, E., M. Hakhamaneshi, M. Unal, Y. Alberto, D. Ay, J. Chhabra, B. Isufi, A. Martin, S. Nikolaou, T. Rodriguez-Nikl, E. Toraman, K. Wu. (2020) "VERT Phase 2 Izmir Earthquake Report", in EERI VERT Izmir Earthquake Phase 2 Report. https://doi.org/10.17603/ds2-q0nw-yp96 v1 

Dedekorkut-Howes, A., Ay, D. and Demires-Ozkul, B. 2020. Two Decades of Planning for Earthquake Resilience in Istanbul. In: Rukmana, D. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Planning Megacities in the Global South. Routledge. 215-230. 

Ay, D. 2019. Diverging Community Responses to State-Led Urban Renewal in the Context of Recentralization of Planning Authority: An Analysis of Three Urban Renewal Projects in Turkey. Habitat International, 91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2019.102028. 

Ay, D. 2017. Book Review: Cities of the Global South Reader, by Miraftab, F. and Kudva, N., Journal of Planning Education and Research. 

Ay, D. and Miraftab, F. 2016. Invented Spaces of Activism: Gezi Park and Performative Practices of Citizenship. In: Hammet, D. & Grugel J. (eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of International Development. Palgrave MacMillan. London. 555-574.

Presentations

Presentations
2024 Ay, D. & Celik C. (2024, September). A Social Reproduction Perspective on Living Wage as  a Feminist Claim: Political Agenda Alternative to Respond Turkey's Overlapping Crises. In IIPPE Annual Congress Proceedings.
2024 Ay, D., & Buyukcivelek, B. (2024, July). Disaster Capitalism meets Authoritarian Urbanism: Post-disaster Urban Redevelopment Planning in Hatay, Turkey. In AESOP Annual Congress proceedings (Vol. 36).
2023

Is strong sustainability an impossible balancing act? Governance of urban densification and housing affordability, SGM (Swiss Geosciences Meeting) Annual Conference. Mendrisio, Switzerland. 17-18 November 2023. 
2023

Care circles? Entrepreneurial land policy instrument for age-appropriate housing provision in densification projects, AESOP (Association of European Schools of Planning) Annual Conference, Lodz, Poland, July 2023.
2023

A conceptual step towards “commoning care” as a pathway for urban postgrowth, IASC (International Association for the Study of the Commons) Biannual Conference. Nairobi, Kenya. 19 - 24 June 2023. 
2023

Municipal childcare centers: Analyzing the care regime at the intersection of urban policy and social policy, TSBD (Turkish Social Sciences Association) Biannual Conference, Ankara, Turkey, February 2023. 
2022 Ay, Deniz (25 August 2022). “Waiting for transformation”: Politics of waiting as a mode of governance in protracted urban renewal projects (Unpublished). In: International Sociological Association, RC 21 Conference. Athens, Greece. 24-26 August 2022.
2022 Ay, Deniz; Gerber, Jean-David (25 July 2022). Formalizing or normalizing informality? A neo-institutionalist analysis of zoning amnesty as a land-use policy (Unpublished). In: AESOP Annual Congress. Tartu, Estonia. 25-29 July 2022.
2022 Ay, Deniz; Götze, Vera; Gerber, Jean-David (8 July 2022). How to plan for care-full densification? Social sustainability of densification where social policy meets land-use planning (unpublished). In: PLPR. Gent, Belgium. 4-8 July 2022.
 2020  Politics of Urban Detransformation: Precarious Spaces and the Institutional Bottlenecks for State-led Urban Renewal, KBAM (Urban and Regional Research Network, Turkey), September 2020.
 2019 Transnational City Networks: Immigration Policymaking and Knowledge Exchanges, Workshop: Cities and the global governance of migration, Migration Policy Centre- European University Institute, Florence, Italy, October 2019.
 2019 City Networks and Local Immigrant Integration: Welcoming Communities Transatlantic Exchange, Brussels Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Immigration and Minorities (BIRMM) Research Day, Brussels, Belgium, April 2019.
 2018 (De)Centralization of Planning Authority and Uneven Community Responses to State-led Redevelopment: An Analysis of Three Urban Renewal

Projects in Turkey, AESOP Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden, July 2018.

 2016 Mitigating Risk in the Risk Society: An Unconventional Megaproject for the Aspiring Global City Istanbul, ACSP Conference, Portland, OR, November 2016.
 2015 Is it Possible to Plan Urban Renewal that does not Cause Displacement? A Comparative Analysis of National Urban Renewal Program in Turkey, International Sociological Association RC 43 Housing and the Build Environment, Chicago, IL, September 2015.
 2015 Invented Spaces of Activism: Gezi Park and Performative Practices of Citizenship, Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, April 2015.
 2014 Practices of Citizenship: Gezi Park, American Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Conference, Philadelphia, PA, November 2014.
 2014 Emerging Model for Disaster Mitigation in Istanbul: How the World Bank Project is Assembled through Policy Mutation, ACSP Conference, Philadelphia, PA, November 2014.
 2014 Commodification of Risk through a Transnational Megaproject in the “Emerging Global City” of Istanbul, Society for the Advancement of Socioeconomics Conference, SASE, Chicago, IL, July 2014.
 2013 Understanding the Relevant City Characteristics in Countrywide Urban Renewal Planning: State-led Urban Renewal in the Context of Disaster Mitigation in Turkey, Joint AESOP/ACSP Congress, Dublin, July 2013.

Research Insights

13/05/2024

The crisis of care as an urban policy challenge: How to mitigate the crisis of social reproduction through municipal land and housing policy?

Our colleague, Dr. Deniz Ay, gave a guest lecture in our Political Ecology and Spatial Development course, where she provided a feminist political ecology perspective on how to operationalise “strong sustainability” objectives in urban redevelopment.
Read the Article