New York · Istanbul · Berlin
The Crossing Research
Anthropologist, researcher, and strategiest living at the crossings.
A crossing is the liminal moment between being and becoming, the generative moment of possibilities. My practice embraces this liminality. By crossing between disciplines and fields, academic knowledge and lived experience, and theory and practice, I work with companies, NGOs, and public institutions that aspires to create their futures intentionally, informed by their here-and-now.
About
As a PhD anthropologist with over a decade of fieldwork across three continents, I work with a broad range of clients: companies seeking to understand their customers and communities, NGOs navigating complex cultural landscapes, and public institutions designing services and experiences for diverse populations. What unites them is a shared recognition that the most important insights are found at the crossings. In collaboration with leading researchers, consultants and trainers, I bring rigorous social science methods to questions that matter, and translate the answers into action.
Research
Every engagement draws on established anthropological and social science methods — qualitative, quantitative, and mixed — adapted for your specific organizational context and goals.
Perspective
I do my best work in the spaces between — between disciplines, between perspectives, between what is known and what is felt. That in-betweenness is not a limitation; it is the methodology.
Impact
Insight without application is just knowledge. Every deliverable is designed to translate into decisions, strategies, and experiences that work for companies, NGOs, and public institutions alike.
Services
Working with me, you will have culturally specific, scientifically grounded, impactful and actionable insights to make your organization and the communities it serves thrive. In every project, I make sure to work with the right team, especially in collaboration with Habitus Research and Outdoorturk Training and Consulting.
Experience Consulting
Wouldn't you want to learn about the thoughts, feelings, and values of your guests, clients, team members, target group or the communities that your organization serves? I provide deep ethnographic and mixed-methods research that uncovers the cultural undercurrents shaping your audience, market, or community. I surface what surveys miss and reveal the experiential patterns to provide actionable insights.
See consulting work ↓Combining anthropological methods with insights from the growing field of User Experience Design (UX), I adopt a broader lens to "Experience Design." Drawing on my extensive experience in "spatial awareness," my Experience Design Consulting services include the target groups of (potential) guests, clients, team members and staff, and decision-makers. Research-based brand and experience design that translates cultural insight into narrative, identity, and touchpoints that genuinely connect with the people you serve. From positioning to venue design, we help you build experiences that resonate.
See consulting work ↓Training · Anthro 101 for YOU!
I bring the tools of anthropology directly into your organization through signature series of interactive, game-based, and collaborative workshops. Carefully curated for your needs, these sessions provide critical insights into human behavior, cultural difference, and the dynamics that shape people's experience of your organization. You can check out one of the trainings in the list, and reach out to work on a customized plan for your specific needs.
Experience Awareness
Tailored for either physical or virtual spaces, including coffee shops, restaurants, event venues, festivals, stores as well as work environments, this training builds the skills to recognize, identify, and respond to varying experience patterns, with particular attention to connection and attunement.
Anthropology Connects!
In this format, we come together to work on strategies of attunement. The capacity to grasp the experience of one another, as an essential human skill, can provide priceless tools for team work, service quality, and branding and design strategies. Participants leave with a richer vocabulary and practical tools to expand their capacity for connection.
Difference is Good!
An interactive workshop series designed to shift how organizations think about difference — from a challenge to be managed into a resource to be cultivated. Drawing on anthropological frameworks, participants explore the benefits and challenges of experiential diversity within teams, communities, and the people they serve.
Speaking
Keynotes, panels, and podcast appearances exploring what it means to cross identities, cultures, and disciplines in today's world. Drawing on my years of fieldwork and academic research, my talks offer frameworks for understanding connection beyond difference, and building communication structures that hold space for complexity.
Topics include: crossing identities and belonging; constructive communication across difference; how to understand ourselves by studying the others?; navigating the benefits and challenges of diversity.
See speeches & presentations ↓Who am I
PhD in Anthropology, CUNY
Anthropologist · Researcher · Strategiest
Anthropologist, educator, and strategist. I work at the intersection of cultural research, brand strategy, and human experience design.
Born and raised in Istanbul, I received my B.A. from Boğaziçi University before moving to New York in 2014, where I earned my PhD in Anthropology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I have lived and worked across multiple continents — including a period as a visiting research fellow at Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin, participating in research projects across Germany between 2021 and 2024.
Alongside engagements with NGOs, public institutions, organizations, and brands, I made sure to have joyful jobs along the way — as a professional mountain guide on Mount Ararat, a training staff member at Outdoorturk, a walker and trainer for dogs of select clients in TriBeCa and Soho, and eventually proudestas "Prof. Fufu" to my students at Brooklyn College, where I taught for a decade. In 2026, I began working with Habitus Research as a project director to help brands around the globe reach their full potential.
"What captures our attention, what fascinates us, what makes us feel safe and comfortable — all depend on observable factors. And each observable factor is an intervention point."
Global
Partnering with brands, NGOs, and public institutions worldwide to embed cultural intelligence into strategy, design, and organizational practice.
New York · 2026
Doctoral research on mobility, inclusion, and care in Berlin — combining ethnographic fieldwork with critical theory.
Berlin · 2021–2024
Transregional and cross-cultural research across Germany, contributing to international academic and policy-oriented projects funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
New York · 2021
New York · 2017
Istanbul · 2008–2013
Designed and facilitated outdoor experiential training programs for corporate teams, developing hands-on workshops in team dynamics, leadership, motivation, and stress management through real-life scenarios and challenging activities.
Istanbul · 2012
Political Science and International Relations — a foundation in how power, culture, and society intersect.
01
Trained in qualitative and quantitative methods — ethnography, interviews, surveys, and mixed-methods frameworks that surface deep human insight.
02
Cross-cultural fieldwork across Istanbul, New York, and Berlin informing strategies for brands navigating diverse and complex human communities.
03
Translating anthropological insight into actionable brand, design, and experience strategies through global collaborations and partnerships.
04
Over a decade designing and delivering university-level anthropology courses and custom organizational workshops across CUNY institutions.
Key collaborations
A global boutique insight and strategy firm dedicated to understanding humans and culture through anthropology and social science. Founded on the conviction that anthropology is the essential key to decoding human nature, behavior, and culture — guiding brands around the world to their full potential.
↗ habitusresearch.comAn Istanbul-based training and consulting firm that uses real-life outdoor scenarios and challenging activities to develop individual and team skills. With 500+ references and 5,000+ events, Outdoorturk brings together management, coaching, team spirit, motivation, and stress management into experiential programs that push teams to grow together beyond the office environment.
↗ outdoorturk.com.trAffiliations & memberships
My Work
Training
A 2-hour training and workshop for Berlin-based clubs, collectives, and festivals to recognize, identify, and act upon the negative experience patterns of guests, especially attuned with potential vulnerabilities and accommodations for accessibility.
Diversity-Conscious Nightlife (DAB) Training Series · Clubcommission Berlin · May 2025
A 14 week long interactive seminar and workshop series, exploring anthropological perspectives specifically curated for business school students to rethink human behavior, cultural and environmental diversity as well introducing them to novel approaches to global connections, communication and accountability.
Baruch College · Spring 2021 & Fall 2024
A 3 week long intensive seminar and workshop series on city life in the US, curated for students in "creative fields" or with creative interests, such as art, film, music, literature, sculpture, and theater. Assignment formats included memes, semi-fiction stories, comic strips, video essays, spoken poetry/rap, and short films.
Brooklyn College · January 2025
Why can't we design an entire anthropology course like a book club, by closely reading two contemporary scholarly books instead of textbooks and outdated articles? I designed this book club to read two books — one on Southwest Asia, one on Mexico — to discuss human relations, gender and masculinity, bodies and feelings, borders and migration, and cultural diversity in Brooklyn, New York. Powered by self-reflective group discussions, the participants produced and presented autobiographical works.
Consulting
Based on a systemic perspective, the workshop used the wealth of ideas of a group to solve problems. Within this framework, brought together people from different trades from Berlin clubs and collectives to discuss case studies from the club context together with professionally guided mediation and to advise each other on how to deal with incidents of discrimination.
Awareness Akademie Berlin · June 2023
A broad consulting from design to on-the-ground work and debriefing for the comfort, joy, safety, and connectedness of the festival-goers.
Whole Festival · July 2023
A comprehensive qualitative and quantitative study of Berlin's club and event scene, conducted in cooperation with academic partners. The study aimed to identify and analyze the economic, social, and aesthetic dimensions of this scene as well as its significance from an urban-planning perspective.
Helped with the designing and analyzing the online survey, yielding more than 4,370 evaluable interviews. Participated in the debrief meeting, including post-debriefing workshops on various areas such as door policy, intersectional policies, and harm-reduction.
Speeches and Presentations
Conference paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, USA.
Conference paper presented at the 47th Warren Susman Conference, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA.
Conference paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting.
Conference paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, California, USA.
Contact
Whether you are a company, NGO, or public institution looking to understand your communities, design better experiences, or build more effective strategies — I would love to hear about your project.