Internal Workshop “Technology and the Body: Care, Empowerment and the Fluidity of Bodies”

By Burak Taşdizen

As part of the “Knowledge Unbound” TM 2c IRSSC project, an internal workshop titled “Technology and the Body: Care, Empowerment and the Fluidity of Bodies” was held at the Orient-Institut Istanbul on 21 January 2020. The workshop brought together two research areas of the institute, namely, “Human, Medicine and Society” and “Study of Religions”, each with a distinctive approach to the study of body.

Dr. Melike Şahinol and Burak Taşdizen welcome the audience. Picture: Yağmur Genç

The workshop involved 13 participants including researchers, artists and locals (from Turkey and Iran) of diverse backgrounds for a fruitful exchange of knowledge and expertise on the IRSSC project. The research areas of the participants span from sociology of medicine to study of religions, from sociology of Middle East to masculinity studies and disability studies in feminist technoscience.

Following the welcoming speech by Dr. Melike Şahinol and Burak Taşdizen, the following presentations were made:

• Robert Langer (Orient-Institut Istanbul) Empowerment by Flagellating Your Body?
  Shii-Muslim Adolescents’ Muharram Rituals in Germany
• Setareh Fatehi (DAS graduate school, Netherlands)
  swim\او : projection and care of/for the live body image
• Shahrzad Irannejad (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany)
  Balanced Bodies: Humoral Medicine in Contemporary Iran
• Azam Naghavi (Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Isfahan, Iran)
  Compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction: The experiences of mother caregivers of a child with disability
• Melike Şahinol (Orient-Institut Istanbul)
  3D-printed Prosthesis and Empowerment in the Childhood
• Burak Taşdizen (Orient-Institut Istanbul)
  Posthuman Feminist Theory: Body Modification and Empowerment

Workshop Program