Yeşim Desticioğlu

Migrants' home-making practices as self-idealisation: A study on the dowry objects of Balkan immigrants across two generations in the UK

Yeşim is a doctoral student at the School of Geography and the Environment. Her doctoral research focuses on the home-making practices of Balkan migrant women in the UK. Through a spatial and material lens, her work delves into the life stories of first- and second-generation migrant women, exploring how intersectional gender identities are enacted in domestic settings. Grounded in an interdisciplinary approach, she draws on feminist geography, material culture, and migration studies.

Prior to her DPhil, Yeşim earned a Master’s degree in Architectural Design from İstanbul Technical University and spent a year as an exchange student at KU Leuven University, where she pursued an inter-scalar approach to architecture. In her master’s dissertation, Yeşim researched a historic craft neighbourhood in Istanbul facing displacement pressures, analysing both the neighbourhood’s internal dynamics and the top-down urban policies.

Alongside her professional experience in several architectural firms, Yeşim has also worked as a research assistant, supporting courses in the City and Architecture Master’s Program as well as undergraduate architectural studios.

Awards

• Mapleten Bree Prize (Co-winner, 2024) – St John’s College
  The Women Who Raised Me (short film)
• Social Sciences Division Research Posters Award (Second Place, 2024) – University of Oxford
• Best Article Award (Co-winner, 2019) – 4th IAPS-CS Network Culture and Space Meeting Series
   

• Desticioğlu, Y. and Gökmen, G. (2023) Rethinking craft neighbourhoods as authentic urban places for productive cities of the future: The case of Galata. In, 30th Urban Design and Implementations Symposium Future of Urban Design. pp. 168-201. Urban Design of Future Proceedings. ISBN: 978-625-7758-21-5.
• Desticioğlu, Y., Zafer, S. and Durgut, C. (2022) An urban artifact in palimpsest city İstanbul: The Bozdoğan Aquaduct. In, Istanbul as an endless space of “urban articulation”. pp. 332-353. İstanbul: Özyeğin University Publication. ISBN: 978-605-5625-22-1.
• Altay, E.C., Desticioğlu, Y. and Yılmaz, E. (2018) Zıtlıkların ötesinde bir süreç: Yeni-eski ve yıkım-yapım [A process beyond a binary: new-old and construction-destruction]. Betonart Magazine, 57: 52-54. ISSN: 1304-494X.