Yesim Yaprak Yildiz

Yaprak joined the department in 2019 following her PhD in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on confessional and testimonial forms of truth-telling on past atrocities. She is currently working on her monograph on production of truth and subjectivity in public confessions of Turkish state actors on state violence against Kurds during the 1990s. Yaprak has worked on human rights violations in Turkey for many years on a wide range of issues from torture and ill-treatment to freedom of expression, women’s rights and refugee rights in organisations including Amnesty International, Freedom from Torture, Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, UN Women and European Roma Rights Centre.

Yaprak received her Master’s degree in Social and Political Thought at the University of Warwick in the UK and her BSc in Political Science at ODTU in Turkey. Prior to joining the department, she worked as a Researcher at the LSE’s European Institute, Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS and as an Associate Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. She has also worked at the Human Rights Consortium, School of Advanced Study.

Teaching

Yaprak currently convenes and teaches on 'Practising Human Rights', an MA in Human Rights, Culture and Social Justice module; and a second-year option ‘Law and Contemporary Society’.