Political scientist, anthropologist

Hilal Alkan

I am a researcher at Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. My research focuses on care and gift practices in various realms of social life. Initially, I have worked on poverty alleviation and informal welfare provision before turning my interest on migration and those groups who show solidarity with refugees and migrants. My recent research project is about the caring relations migrants form with the plants they grow and the plants that accompany them in the cities they settled. My inspiration comes from feminist ethics of care and multi species studies. 
For me global sociology is about untangling and recognizing the relations that surpass national borders and connect people in very intimate and vital ways. This involves looking into care relations that span transnationally, as well as between species.