Project team

Burçe Çelik is an anticolonial researcher who engages in thinking, writing, and teaching on the politics, political economy, and history of communications. Her passion for historical research stems not only from a love of uncovering the past but also from a belief that revisiting history can transform our understanding of media and communications—especially when we attend to the omissions, erasures, and marginalizations in dominant historical narratives. For her, critical historical inquiry is fundamental to rigorous theoretical work, particularly in advancing decolonial and anticolonial perspectives within the discipline. Her recent book, Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire: A Critical History, challenges the widely held belief that modern communications are mere byproducts of Western capitalist modernity and other Western forces. By offering an alternative history of communication networks spanning two centuries, the book seeks to reframe dominant narratives and highlight overlooked dynamics in the development of communication systems. This book was recognized as the Runner-Up for the Best Book of 2023 in Global Communication and Social Change by the International Communication Association.

Sebastian James Rose is a historian interested in the role and intersection of workers, colonialism and technology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His research focuses on communication networks and imperial infrastructures from below, foregrounding communities, actors and spaces usually ignored in histories of technology and empire. His thesis traced the social and political history of the Indo-European Telegraph Department in Iran and the Persian Gulf and analysed the role of telegraph stations and how workers, local communities and the Qajar and Ottoman state influenced, disrupted and contested the department and its network. In 2024 he held a position as a research fellow at Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, focusing on workers movements and trade journals in US telegraph networks. Sebastian was shortlisted for the 2021 Olivette Otele Prize for his paper exploring the organisation and racialisation of telegraph workers in the IETD.

Sena Başöz is an artist working across multiple media whose works investigate themes of healing, exploring ways to interact with what is considered out of reach, and experimentally regenerating what is perceived as frozen, dead, stale, or lost. She often works with archives as the only tangible material that bridges life and death. Her recent solo exhibitions and performances include Leap into the Future (Yanköşe Public Art Project, Istanbul, 2024), Forough (Lancaster University Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster, 2024), Inevitable Choreography  (Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul, 2023), Possibilities of Healing (Yapı Kredi Culture Arts and Publishing, Istanbul, 2023), Slalom (Wellcome Collection, London, 2022), Clam (Matsutake at Librairie Yvon Lambert, Paris, 2021), Ars Oblivionis (Lotsremark Projekte, Basel, 2020), and Hold on Let Go (MO-NO-HA Seongsu, Seoul, 2020). Başöz received her BA in Economics from Boğaziçi University in 2002 and her MFA in Film and Video from Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts in 2010. She has participated in artist residencies at Atelierhaus Salzamt, Linz (2010), Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2017) and Delfina Foundation, London (2020–2022).