At EarthSky,

With curiosity, we look, we listen, we research. We are drawn not only to what is, but also to the infinite possibilities of what could be and of what we might - together - bring into being. Curiosity and research shape every step we take at EarthSky. We love being part of research collectives and projects, learning from other curious eyes and diverse perspectives. Cynthia Enloe’s invitation to a “feminist curiosity” is always with us, always opening new paths. Wherever we look, we ask: “Where are the women? Where is gender?” Yet we do not stop there. From a feminist+ perspective, we keep asking: Who else is missing? Whose voices, stories, and truths remain unheard, unseen, untold? Who has been left outside—excluded from the dominant narratives, spaces, practices, research questions, and processes of knowledge-production? What can we learn from silences, silencings, and absences? What kinds of participatory, inclusive, and creative methods, tools, and pedagogies can guide us in designing each research step together with those most affected? How can we render nature and the more-than-human world subjects rather than objects of our research? How can we shift our gaze, our stance, and our ways of relating to see life as a multispecies journey of interbeing (Thích Nhất Hạnh) and interbecoming (Donna Haraway)? How do we bring forth the wisdom embedded within life itself, within diverse communities and within each unique being? Can research be imagined as a relationship of solidarity and co-creation? How do our bodies, senses, positionalities shape processes of knowledge production? How is it possible to research the body—and to research with the body? What does embodied research look like? What kinds of research practices can we envision and together bring into life for weaving a world rooted in equality, freedom, interbecoming, and solidarity?

These are the questions that guide us as we design our own research projects and shape the collaborations we engage in.

With feminist+ curiosity, we keep researching, standing in solidarity, co-creating, and seeking better stories of interbeing and interbecoming—so that together we may weave a world of greater equality and freedom.

“There is always a better story than the better story.”—Dina Georgis

“How can our albums and archives gesture toward what has been lost and forgotten, toward the many lives that remain obscured, unknown, and unthought?”—Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory

Within this world, hosted by our bodies, we experience life. With each step we take, we walk as part of this world. As we walk, our eyes touch the stories of cities, places, and all beings with curious, friendly eyes, and we tremble with love and care. Step by step, story by story, we weave our path together—listening, seeing, touching, smelling, pausing, embracing, and being embraced… We walk by sensing what is possible, entering into relationship with it anew. We carry the networks that enrich us into the new stories that unfold before us, weaving connections. As we walk, we untangle knotted threads and age-old tangles, and craft new patterns. Active hope (Joanna Macy) walks alongside us, guiding our way. Memory, too, is an inseparable companion on our walks: the past experiences carried in our bodies and the hidden stories held by places resurface with each step. Thich Nhat Hạnh’s practice of mindful walking teaches us to be present to each moment and each movement of the body—step by step. Walking opens us to the traces of cities, of nature, and of the past; it weaves invisible bonds between place and memory. With every step, we root ourselves once more—and together—into life, into our bodies, into our being-together, into nature and our own nature, into the places we pass through and inhabit.

“Walking shares with making and working that crucial element of engagement of the body and the mind with the world, of knowing the world through the body and the body through the world.” — Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

“Place is always relative; what is absolute is the path
— or, the act of walking…”

Oruç Aruoba, Walking

Listening, for us, is never a single act; it is a continuous practice of attunement. We listen to trees, birds, winds, mountains, rivers; to places, to many voices, to the unseen, to silence, to wounds, to life in all its fleeting and enduring quietness. To listen is not only to hear but to open ourselves—through our bodies, our skin, our breath—to life and to one another. Listening expands our inner world even as it binds us more deeply to the world we share.

We sense the whispers of our ancestors, the fractures of the present, the possibilities of the future. We echo within ourselves the voices of those silenced, ignored, or erased. We draw on Donna Haraway’s notion of situated knowledges, carrying awareness of our own plural positionalities as we listen. Listening is not a path toward a single, ultimate truth, but a practice that makes it possible to speak through contradictions, multiplicities, and wounds.

We take to heart Haraway’s invitation to stay with the trouble—to linger with discomfort, to dwell in complexity rather than seek easy resolutions. We hear the calls of more-than-human beings. We embrace plurality. We listen to life as a whole, in all its transience and endurance, in all its silences. And as we listen, we are transformed—and in transformation, we hear life’s abundance and diversity anew.

“Ah, noone’s got the time
To stop and appreciate the fine things”

Gülten Akın

Sometimes we weave, sometimes we are woven. The unique stories of beings touch and intertwine; we feel it, we witness it. This witnessing ties us closer, bringing us into deeper encounter with one another. It is not only our colors, social identities, fields of work, experiences, and meanings that meet—our knots meet too; they twist and entwine… And this entanglement is our trust in one another, our gift to each other.

How will we untangle these knots—across species, across times, across layers? And how will we reweave them? Vandana Shiva calls us away from the illusion of being separate, segregated beings, inviting us instead to remember our invisible bonds, to rejoin the infinite web of life with all its possibilities, and to reweave our stories into it.

We loosen our knots; we pause unhurried in the places where we come undone… We are both the weavers and the woven. Time and again, with love and solidarity, we are woven anew. Time and again, we heal; time and again, we are born, transformed, and returned—both to our own unique stories and to the colorful collective stories they weave together. And we believe forever in the power of stories—their power to heal, to transform, and to open countless possibilities for better worlds.

With our unique stories as companions, we come to know our oneness, our togetherness, our interbeing and interbecoming, and the ties—visible and invisible—that connect us; and we weave webs, circles, and communities that nourish, co-create, transform, and heal.

“Some species of trees spread root systems underground that interconnect the individual trunks and weave the individual trees into a more stable whole that can’t so easily be blown down in the wind. Stories and conversations are like those roots.” — Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions

When we come together, we become more than a community; we weave a network of solidarity that listens deeply and takes root in one another. We know how feminist+ solidarity can sustain life, especially in difficult times; for our gatherings are not only moments of sharing, but also of holding each other up, reaching out in need, and tending to one another with care.

In the circles we create, a shared rhythm emerges, echoing with each of our voices. We root ourselves together; and as our roots intertwine, forests of solidarity grow. These forests are not only spaces of resistance, but also of imagination: we dream of new horizons, and together we move forward, growing stronger through uncertainty, making this our way of life. Within these circles that echo our multiplicity, Earth and Sky come together — EarthSky becomes solidarity, becomes love, becomes hope.

The concept of feminist care guides us in this journey. Feminist care is not only about meeting one another’s needs; it is also about cultivating a reciprocal relationship of care, sensitivity, and responsibility—with people, with nature, with place, with silence, and with memory. This perspective, which insists that care is political, forms the very foundation of our feminist+ solidarity.

“The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together.”― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“Unique and free as a tree,
in siblinghood as a forest.”

Nazım Hikmet

At YerGök Solidarity, we aim to create and nurture a culture of planetary solidarity. We believe that the lives and well-being of all beings — human and more-than-human — are interconnected and one; and we weave into the fabric of our work our commitment to solidarity, equality, and inclusivity; to a culture of nonviolence and peace; and to the intention of building and sustaining communities rooted in love, compassion, and care.

As we research, walk, listen, weave, and come together, we embrace the purpose of creating an egalitarian, transparent, and pluralistic space — one where every member, partner, participant, and fellow earth-being is valued, respected, heard, and welcomed with the right to participate “as themselves.”

As members and co-crafters of YerGök, we know that the values we embrace can only be sustained through a living system of values. For us, it is not only what we do but also how we do it that matters. To co-create the world we dream of here and now, we commit ourselves to putting our hands to the work of shaping a living system of values — one that remains open to transformation, invites collective learning, and calls us to reimagine together.

As a first step, we are publishing our Gender Equality Policy (GEP). This policy rests not only on gender equality but on a broader constellation of values: the unity of life, solidarity, peace, and care. Rooted here and now, these values form the ground of a commitment that will flourish and evolve with us.

Arman Yılmaz was born in Ergani, Diyarbakır. After graduating from Ankara Anatolian High School, he completed his undergraduate studies at Marmara University Faculty of Law and his LLM in Economic Law at Bilgi University. In addition to practicing law, he is engaged in both professional and voluntary activities in the field of human rights advocacy. The right to live in a healthy environment and the right to the city are his main voluntary focus areas. His primary interests include fishing, gastronomy, cinema, and history.

Aylin Vartanyan Dilaver studied political economy and literature at Barnard College and Columbia University. She taught critical reading and writing for many years at Boğaziçi University, where she was also one of the founding educators of the Peace Education Research and Application Center. Her encounter in 2005 with Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed opened a path for her to embrace the arts as a language of social transformation and deepened her belief in their transformative power. She began her doctoral studies in Expressive Arts and Social Transformation at the European Graduate School in Switzerland in 2010 and completed her dissertation by bringing together digital storytelling and post-memory approaches in collaboration with Armenian women living in Istanbul. Since 2011, she has been facilitating expressive arts-based workshops on grief, emotional resilience, intergenerational memory, and ecopoiesis, seeking ways to give form to unspoken stories. She is currently a faculty member at the Expressive Arts Institute in Istanbul, founded in 2021. She continues to create arts-based learning environments both within and beyond academia. She also writes texts interwoven with personal memory, collective witnessing, and aesthetic inquiry. She continues her work as one of the founding members of Parrhesia Collective, a group of Armenian women academics and artists.

Ayşe Gül’s learning journey began at Şair Sırrı Hanım Elementary School in Diyarbakır and deepened in the Karakaya mountains—where goats, healing plants, the valley ecosystem, and the Euphrates River became her teachers and companions in exploring life’s many layers. She studied Political Science and Sociology at Boğaziçi University, and earned her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. After three decades of research and teaching, Ayşe Gül retired in 2024 as Professor of Anthropology at Sabancı University. There, she co-created academic programs, university policies, and initiatives bridging research, institutional transformation, and social justice, including the Gender Studies PhD Program, Curious Steps: Gender and Memory Walks of Istanbul, the Transformative Activism Program, and the Gender Equality Action Plan, also serving as Director of SU Gender (2016–2019).

She led two EU Horizon projects—RESISTIRÉ and ACCTING—on gender+ inequalities and ecological transitions, published extensively on memory, violence, gender, and cultural diversity, and has held visiting positions as Marie Jahoda Visiting Chair in Gender Studies at Ruhr University-Bochum (2012) and Visiting Faculty Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference (2014–2016). She also served as Associate Editor of the European Journal of Women’s Studies (2009–2022), and received recognitions including the PEN Duygu Asena Award, Boğaziçi University’s Üstün Ergüder Research Award, and Duke University’s Few-Glasson Alumni Society Award.

Since 2008, Ayşe Gül has been actively involved with the Hrant Dink Foundation, contributing to the creation of the 23.5 Hrant Dink Site of Memory—part of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience—and serving as an Advisory Board Member. In 2003, she launched the feminist radio program Advisory Board Member. In 2003, she launched the feminist radio program Hikayenin Kadın Hali (Women’s Side of the Story) Advisory Board Member. In 2003, she launched the feminist radio program , which continues today as Hikayenin Her Hali (All Sides of the Story) on Apaçık Radyo as a collective program co-hosted with fellow YerGök members Aylin, Burcu Meltem, Esin, Özge, and Özlem, among others.

Complementing her academic and activist work, she has cultivated embodied and contemplative practices, becoming a certified qigong instructor and completing trauma-informed facilitation, Lewis Deep Democracy, Open Space Technology, yin yoga, Reiki, and meditation trainings, including the two-year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. With her growing focus on ecology and collective transformation, Ayşe Gül is passionate about weaving connections between research, activism, and contemplative practices, cultivating co-creative spaces where personal, collective, and planetary journeys of reckoning, healing, and transformation can unfold. and planetary journeys of reckoning, healing, and transformation can unfold. Violence Against Women in Turkey and planetary journeys of reckoning, healing, and transformation can unfold. (with Yeşim Arat), Ebru: Reflections on Cultural Diversity (with Attila Durak), The Grandchildren (with Fethiye Çetin), Women Mobilizing Memory (co-edited with M. J. Contreras, M. Hirsch, J. Howard, B. Karaca, and A. Solomon), and From Hand to Hand: Transformative Activism Stories (co-edited with Ebru Nihan Celkan, Özge Ertem, and Sema Semih) are among the books that bear witness to this journey.

Burcu is a literary scholar, translator, and researcher working across justice axes including climate, food, and education. She holds double degrees in English Literature and Translation Studies and completed her MA in Interdisciplinary Studies at George Mason University as a Fulbright scholar. Her thesis examined late 19th and early 20th-century Victorian children’s literature, analyzing how stories written for boys and girls shaped gender roles within Britain’s imperial ideology. She has published review essays in girls shaped gender roles within Britain’s imperial ideology. She has published review essays in Radikal Çocuk and İyi Kitap girls shaped gender roles within Britain’s imperial ideology. She has published review essays in and translated children’s books from Turkish into English. Burcu taught critical thinking and research methods for nearly a decade at ITU and Kadir Has University. She later worked as an Education Specialist at Rural Schools Transformation Network (KODA), developing resources for multi-grade rural school teachers and contributing to training modules. Between 2022 and 2025, she served as project specialist/researcher in the EU Horizon project ACCTING (AdvanCing behavioral Change Through an INclusive Green deal), conducting research on community gardens and solidarity practices that promote food security and justice for marginalized groups. She is a board member of Roots & Shoots Turkey, co-partner of Nature Play House, and a member of the Evaluation Board of the Good Practices in Education Conference. Burcu is also pursuing a long-term family story project on her Pontic Greek great-grandmother from Alaçam, Samsun; a fragment was presented at the 13th Sharjah Biennial (Istanbul) as a collaborative storytelling and sound installation. She hopes to one day weave these fragmented pieces together, bringing her story to light.

She was born and raised in Antakya, on the slopes of the Amanos Mountains, along the branches of the Asi River. A birdwatcher, haiku enthusiast, and nature lover. She studied Chemistry at Middle East Technical University, focusing during her undergraduate years on environmental and industrial chemistry. She completed her master’s degree at Istanbul Bilgi University on climate and education policies. Her work spans education policy, environmental/nature education, sustainability education, climate change education, nature-based games, ecological literacy, degrowth, and biomimicry. Since 2017, she has been leading data-driven monitoring studies on pre-university formal education policies at the Education Reform Initiative of Sabancı University. Previously, she worked with World Wide Fund for Nature-Turkey (WWF), Nature Association (Doğa Derneği), United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), The Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion, for Reforestation and the Protection of Natural Habitats (TEMA), and the Foundation for the Protection and Promotion of the Environment and Cultural Heritage (ÇEKÜL). Between 2015 and 2020, she taught courses on Ecological Literacy and Sustainability, as well as Biomimicry, at Istanbul Bilgi University. She is the co-founder of the Nature Play House and the creator of the game My Nature Friend’s Box. She serves on the boards of YerGök Solidarity, Roots & Shoots Turkey, and the Network of Education Policy Centers (NEPC); and is a trustee of the Bir Tohum Foundation. She is also a member of the IUCN Commission on Education and Communication, the International Degrowth Network, and Common Ecologies.

Cihan is a facilitator/consultant with her work on designing/implementing inclusive and emergent processes. She works on capacity building for civil society, workplace rights, othering and belonging, gender equity, immigration, conflict and polarisation, human rights, discrimination and inclusive stakeholder engagement. Being an accredited Lewis Deep Democracy instructor, she also works with approaches such as Sociocracy, TheoryU, Social Presencing Theatre, Open Space Technology, Socratic Dialogue, Art of Hosting and Theatre of the oppressed. She works in partnerships to mainstream these approaches into social impact spaces via her initiative Por Muta, to hear all the silent voices (hence the name For the Mute). She is also the co-founder of NGO Hasat, an organisation focusing on emergence impact through co-design and co-facilitation by bringing an understanding of engagement, conflict and inclusion. Following her graduation from the Department of International Relations and Political Science at Boğaziçi University, Cihan Koral received her master’s degrees in European Social Security at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and in Social Integration and Development at Vrije Universiteit Brussel through a Jean Monnet Scholarship.

Beginning her journey into literature, drama and film, gender and women’s studies, cultural studies, Ottoman and Turkish Studies at Boğaziçi University, Hülya continued working on these fields during her doctoral degree in Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. Hülya currently serves as Senior Fellow at the Orient Institut Istanbul der Max Weber Stiftung and Visiting Professor of Gender Studies at the Margherita von Brentano Zentrum der Freien Universität Berlin. Between 2019-2022, she was the Director of SU Gender (Sabancı University's Gender and Women's Studies Center). During the foundational years of Sabancı University, Hülya was one of the founders of the undergraduate and graduate programs of Cultural Studies, the doctoral program of Gender Studies, Sabancı University’s Gender and Women’s Studies Center (SU Gender), the Purple Certificate Program and the ProGender+ Program for the corporate sector. Hülya has served as a Member of the Sexual Harassment Committee and was one of the co-creators of the Policy against Sexual Harassment at Sabancı University. Since 2018, she has served as Professor of Ottoman and Turkish Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. Between 2001-2024, she was Assistant and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at Sabancı University. She is the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers and Newton Grant (British Academy/with Murat Akser). Her articles in the fields of gender studies, memory and trauma studies, empire studies and nationalism, history of human rights, literature, theater, and film studies have been published in prominent journals. Her recent works include Critical Perspectives on Genocide: History, Politics and Aesthetics of 1915 (Routledge, 2023, with Müge Göçek and Ron Suny), Mapping Gender: What’s New and What’s Ahead in Ottoman and Turkish Studies (Max Weber Stiftung Publications 2022, with Richard Wittmann); (Max Weber Stiftung Publications 2022, with Richard Wittmann); Performing Turkishness: Politics of Theater in Turkey and its Diasporas, (Max Weber Stiftung Publications 2022, with Richard Wittmann); (Special Issue of Comparative Drama, 2018, with R. Ertuğ Altınay), (Max Weber Stiftung Publications 2022, with Richard Wittmann); (Special Issue of Comparative Drama, 2018, with R. Ertuğ Altınay), Halide Edib and Political Violence: The Armenian Atrocities, Dictatorship and Nonviolence (Max Weber Stiftung Publications 2022, with Richard Wittmann); (Special Issue of Comparative Drama, 2018, with R. Ertuğ Altınay), (Bilgi University Press, 2016, in turkish), Hundert Jahre Türkei: Von Revolten, Träumen und Hoffnungen (Unionsverlag Zürich, 2010, with Erika Glassen) and So ist das, meine Schöne… (with Ayşe Gül Altınay, Esin Düzel and Nilgün Bayraktar, Orlanda Verlag Berlin, 2010). She is currently the editor of the Special Issue titled “Aesthetic Interventions to Gender-Based Violence and Sexual Violence” of the European Journal of Women’s Studies (with Julia Garraio, to be published in 2026). “Ecological Imaginaries in Turkish Literature, Theater and Film” is the title of the Special Issue that Hülya is currently working on together with Özlem Öğüt Yazıcıoğlu. Further, Survivor Archives, a book she has been working on with Melanie Tanielian and Erdağ Göknar, received Duke University Franklin Humanities Institute's Book Manuscript Award (2021). Currently, she is also preparing several novels for publication.

After graduating from the Faculty of Law at Istanbul University (LL.B.), İzzet completed his first thesis-based master’s degree (M.A.) in Labour and Social Security Law at the Department of Labour Economics and Industrial Relations, Institute of Social Sciences, Marmara University. He later earned a second thesis-based master’s degree (M.A.) in Management and Work Psychology from the same university, with his thesis titled “Discrimination and Combating Discrimination in Workplaces.” He is currently pursuing his fully funded doctoral studies (Ph.D.) in Private Law at Kadir Has University. Between 2012 and 2020, he taught courses at vocational schools, taking a break from active legal practice to serve as head of department and program chair, before voluntarily returning to part-time status to continue teaching. Alongside his academic duties, he has delivered training programs for managers, lawyers, HR specialists, and both blue- and white-collar workers in the training centers of various universities, trade unions, consultancy firms, and corporate organizations. He also continues to contribute as a trainer and speaker in the activities of numerous civil society organizations, including congresses, workshops, seminars, and symposia. A former regular columnist for a national newspaper, İzzet is the author of a published book, as well as several scholarly articles and training booklets prepared for institutional use. Having played volleyball for many years, he is also a writer of both detective and non-detective short stories, and a member of the Crime Writers Association of Turkey (POYABİR).

Nazlı was born in Mudanya as the grandchild of a family of “population exchange” migrants from Crete. From childhood on, her encounters with what was considered “different”—in language, around dining tables, and through stories—taught her the richness of diversity and the many struggles for existence. This search has shaped not only her personal journey but also her professional life. She earned her bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Dokuz Eylül University and her master’s degree in Political Science from Sabancı University. Since then, she has taken on responsibilities in numerous projects focusing on civil society, peacebuilding, gender, and LGBTQIA+ rights. Between 2021 and 2023, she served as co-coordinator of the Transformative Activism Program at Sabancı University’s Gender and Women’s Studies Center (SU Gender), where she supported activists’ resilience and community building through diverse approaches and tools such as facilitation, storytelling, somatic practices, and creative expression. During the same period, she also worked as a researcher in the EU Horizon RESISTIRÉ project, which examined gender+ inequalities in the context of the pandemic and other crises. Today, she coordinates a grantmaking program at an international human rights organization, supporting grassroots groups across 86 countries in the face of restrictions on civic space. Alongside YerGök, she continues to volunteer in a wide range of associations and initiatives—ranging from cultural heritage and child-centered design to women’s funds and creative solidarity networks. Drawing on her training in Standing Like a Tree Qigong, trauma-sensitive facilitation, and Lewis Deep Democracy, Nazlı grounds both her activism and her life in practices of care and creativity. She believes in building movements centered on resilience and solidarity, and in the right of every person—especially activists—to nurture care, rest, and inner peace, and to claim the right to “be oneself fully.”

Born in Istanbul in 1973, Barış is an artist, facilitator, and designer and practitioner of art-based learning programs who has carried out numerous projects at both national and international levels in the fields of sculpture and art education. After graduating from the Sculpture Department of Mimar Sinan University, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and moved to the United States, where he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before completing his MFA in Sculpture at SUNY Albany. During his academic years, he participated as a resident artist in renowned programs such as Vermont Studio Center, Art Omi, and the International Institute for Peace Education. In 2005, he founded PACE Children’s Art Center in Istanbul, where he has since developed creative, art-based learning programs for children and youth. Since then, he has collaborated with leading institutions such as Akbank Sanat, Contemporary Istanbul, and the Istanbul Biennial, reaching thousands of children, young people, and educators/facilitators. His seminar and workshop series, “Art, Children, Talent, and Creativity,” has engaged wide audiences both in-person and online. Among Karayazgan’s projects are art-based healing initiatives in earthquake-affected regions, educational programs for children and young people, museum discovery tours, and art-centered learning experiences. He has also taken part in sculpture, education, and art projects in the United States, the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Greece, with his works exhibited in numerous national and international venues. As a TEDx speaker, he has shared the transformative and developmental power of art. Today, Barış continues to create innovative projects that support children, youth, and teachers in accessing art and fostering personal growth through artistic expression, working both as an artist and as an art facilitator.

Özge Ertem, historian and academic editor, completed her PhD in the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence (2012) and her post-doc research at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University (2015-2016). Her research focused on the history of childhood and cultural history in the Early Republican era and the socio-political and cultural history of famine and hunger, state and communal relations, disaster and everyday life, relief and charity networks, and famine narratives and famine memory in the Late Ottoman Empire. She has taught modern history, global history, Ottoman history, history of modern Turkey, and humanities courses at Boğaziçi, Işık, Koç, and Acıbadem Universities and worked as a librarian and editor at ANAMED and as an archivist and academic editor at different institutions and independently (i.e. IAE, Meşher Gallery, SALT). She was an actress and dramaturgist in BuluTiyatro theater company (2011–2016). At Sabancı University Gender and Women’s Studies Center (SU Gender), she worked as the coordinator of Curious Steps Gender and Memory Walks program and the Transformative Activism program (2020-2023). As part of Transformative Activism, she received training in storytelling and trauma-informed facilitation, and facilitated community gatherings and events. Currently, she is working as an editor for Koç University ANAMED and the Toplumsal Tarih (Social History) journal, while continuing her acting training in Stüdyo Oyuncuları (Studio Actors) in Istanbul and her research on the intersections of history, acting, story-telling and psychoanalytical methods both within and outside academia.

She has been working in the field of civil society with a rights-based approach for over 15 years. She completed her undergraduate studies in Sociology at Middle East Technical University and holds MA in Human Rights Law from Istanbul Bilgi University. Her MA research focused on deep poverty and how the fight against poverty can be addressed within a rights-based framework. She approached poverty as a subject of discussion within the field of human rights law. Throughout her career, she has been involved in numerous initiatives in the areas of human rights, poverty alleviation, gender, labor rights, ecological disaster management, and rights-based humanitarian aid. She has worked with various institutions, organizations, and networks both in Turkey and internationally, contributing to the development of rights-based approaches and models across different fields. She currently works as an independent consultant, providing support to civil society organizations and professional associations in areas such as strategy development, resource mobilization, sustainability, capacity building, and network building.

After studying acting at Anadolu University and working as a professional actor for fifteen years, Roza became one of the first graduates of the Seiba The Way of the Storyteller International Certification Program, and began her journey as a storyteller and facilitator.
Her belief that humanity’s story is told within each individual’s story, and that personal stories can serve social transformation, led her to work in the field of Personal Storytelling. In 2019, under the mentorship of Senem Donatan Mohan, she began performing her personal story Evvel Zamanla Tanışmak. That same year, she attended the three-week Intensive Personal Storytelling workshop in Crete, led by Stella Kassimati and Sue Hollingsworth. She began sharing the experience she gained from these works in the Stories Waiting to be Told Personal Storytelling Workshop, which she designed. By creating a podcast channel of the same name, she made the participants’ stories accessible to a wider audience. Between 2018 and 2020, she received Basic Existential Analysis Training at the Existential Academy in Istanbul. In 2021, she began the Expressive Arts Therapy Program for Mental Health, Education, and Social Change, organized by Expressive Arts Institute Istanbul in collaboration with The European Graduate School and TAE Barcelona, and completed it in 2023. In addition to providing one-on-one coaching and group workshops in Personal Storytelling and storytelling with NGOs, institutions, and individuals, she continues to tell stories and facilitate workshops for both children and adults. She loves laughing, playing, loving, and listening with care.

Sema is a Berlin-based cultural worker and multidisciplinary artist whose practice bridges research, education, and creative expression. They hold a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Boğaziçi University and a master’s degree in Cultural Studies from Istanbul Bilgi University. Based on performance ethnography, their graduate research offered an analysis of the historical relationship between feminist and transgender politics in Turkey. From 2016 to 2024, Sema served as Program Coordinator at Sabancı University’s Gender and Women’s Studies Center (SU Gender), where they gained extensive experience in gender-sensitive research, project design, trauma-informed facilitation, and public programming. During this period, they led the Curious Steps: Gender and Memory Walks Program, which made visible the silenced histories of women and LGBTI+ communities through collective walks across different neighborhoods of Istanbul. In 2017, together with Ayşe Gül, they co-founded the Transformative Activism Program, which brought together rights advocates working in the fields of gender, ecology, migration, peacebuilding, and human rights to develop embodied, creative, and collective practices of resilience. As part of the program, a book titled “from hand to hand: stories of transformative activism”, featuring the stories of activists, was published in 2022. Beyond their institutional work, Sema has been actively involved in various NGOs and artistic initiatives—including Queerwaves, Jetz, and EarthSky Solidarity—focusing on gender equality, LGBTI+ rights, and transnational solidarity. Currently, as a Fellow at Off University, Sema is developing an artistic research project on trans/feminist memory in Turkey. In the 2025-26 Winter Semester, they will also teach the online course Gender, Power, Social Transformation: Critical Perspectives from Turkey and Beyond, in collaboration with Marburg University and Off University.

Born in Istanbul, Yasemin graduated from Kadıköy Anatolian High School and continued her education at Istanbul University Faculty of Law. During high school, she served as the president of the Literature Committee and the School Magazine Club, and during university, she was an active member of the ILSA (International Law Students Association). After completing her legal internship at the Istanbul Bar Association, she pursued an LL.M. in Human Rights at Lund University with full scholarship from the SI – Swedish Turkish Scholarship program, completing her thesis on the human rights implications of distance basic education. She graduated in the fall of 2013 and returned to Istanbul, where she began working in civil society on urban and education rights. She worked as a project assistant at the Citizens’ Association in the Local Democracy Project, supporting meetings with local NGOs across various regions of Turkey, contributing to the preparation of project outputs, and participating in advocacy meetings with members of the European Commission in Brussels. In 2015, she began practicing law, which she continues to this day. In parallel, she has been engaged in civil society through trial monitoring projects and advocacy activities focused on the right to education. She also participated in a training of trainers program organized by the European Court of Human Rights. Enrolled in the PhD Program in Public Law at Bilgi University, she has advanced to the thesis qualification stage and is continuing her dissertation writing journey. Her personal interests include literature, nature, hiking, psychology, and dance. She enjoys writing essays and poetry.

We remember Dr. Jane Goodall, founder of the Roots & Shoots program, who dedicated her life to nature, humanity, chimpanzees, and all living beings — and we keep her legacy of wisdom, courage, and hope alive in our hearts.

As YerGök, while nurturing planetary kinship, transformative hope, and interspecies solidarity, we continue to draw inspiration from Jane Goodall’s life — one woven with science, curiosity, compassion, and love.

We are committed to staying in close collaboration with Roots & Shoots Türkiye, founded with the initiative of Jane Goodall’s close friend and colleague Aslıhan Niksarlı, who brought us together with Dr. Goodall in two special events in Istanbul in 2024. We will continue to keep alive her call that “every individual can make a difference,” her philosophy of planetary togetherness, and her transformative hope — especially with and through children and young people.

From an interview with Dr. Jane Goodall by our member Burcu Meltem Arık (President of Roots & Shoots Türkiye) for Magma Magazine, we bid farewell to the beloved “Sage of the Forest” with love and gratitude:

As EarthSky Solidarity Association, we participated both online and in person in the 15th AWID International Feminist Forum: “Feminist Realities: Rising Together,” organized by AWID – the Association for Women’s Rights in Development in Bangkok. Alongside the online workshop “Better Stories of Healing Activism” organized and facilitated by Sema Semih, Cihan Koral, Özge Ertem, Ezgi Öz and Nazlı Türker, Ayşe Gül Altınay and Burcu Meltem Arık led the daily “When the Body Says Yes: Qigong and Haiku Workshop.”

Ayşe Gül Altınay participated as an invited speaker in the Memory Lab – Dissonant Memories Summer School organized by the University of Bologna. This year’s program, titled “Dissonant Memories: Between Individual and Collective Pasts,” brought together researchers and students working on social memory, post-conflict healing, art, and public remembrance practices.

In her talk, “Transversal Memory Walks as Better Stories of Feminist+ Solidarity,” Ayşe Gül explored memory walks through a transversal lens, sharing alternative ways of storytelling grounded in healing, solidarity, ecological belonging, and planetary connectedness. She noted that the concept of “transversal politics” was first developed by Bologna-based feminists in the early 1990s, and that she first learned about it from the pioneering peace researcher Cynthia Cockburn. Ayşe Gül shared her excitement about revisiting transversal politics as a way to reimagine the intersectional and ecological dimensions of feminist+ solidarity in the very city where the concept was born.

Throughout the week, students worked in small groups to explore Bologna’s multilayered histories and living memories, designing their own Memory Walk of Bologna. On the final day, this walk came to life across the city — as a collective act of learning, remembrance, and solidarity.

Learn more: Memory Lab – Dissonant Memories Summer School

Esin Düzel will be a visiting researcher at the Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE), one of the leading research organizations operating under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland, during the 2025–2026 academic year. During this period, she will conduct in-depth research informed by multispecies anthropology, examining how shifting security policies transform forest governance and the multispecies forest communities. Drawing on the cases of Finland and Turkey, her work will explore how the European Union’s Green Deal could be transformed into a more just and inclusive framework inspired by feminist ecological models of peace. This visiting research period at LUKE will enable Esin to extend her long-term academic work on the anthropology of security, feminist ecology, and social and political transformation into a new geographical and institutional context. It will also provide valuable opportunities to foster interdisciplinary collaborations with researchers in Finland. ​​As EarthSky, we will learn a great deal from Esin’s research and collaborations. Wishing you all the best on this new journey, Esin!