Johanna: Hey Burak, so nice to meet you! You recently joined the Design+Posthumanism Network so I’ll begin with a question that was directed at me in the stitches series shortly after I joined: Where in life are you?
Burak: Hey Johanna, it’s so nice to meet you, and thank you for the invitation to take part in this conversation. As a new member of the Design + Posthumanism Network, I’m really glad to join this ongoing exchange. I deeply value such initiatives, especially those by and for early-career researchers who are still finding their footing while daring to reimagine where design might go next.
I’ve recently completed my PhD, and I now find myself navigating multiple research endeavors from writing to pursuing new questions in different collaborations, conducting and consulting fieldwork, each unfolding at its own rhythm.
Lately, I’ve joined a book club to intentionally experience a slower way of reading and reflecting. I’ve also been contemplating new formats for bringing to the center the kinds of academic knowledge that have remained on the margins, particularly in academic publishing.
I’m based in Istanbul, where autumn has just arrived. I often take walks by the coast and watch all the critters, humans included. So, I suppose this is where I am in life! Somewhere in between motion and reflection, staying grounded and attentive within the fast-paced academic world that wraps itself around me, with all its intriguing questions and paths that await.
Johanna: Got any tipps for someone approaching PhD completion, entering this space of new possibility but also renewed precarity and uncertainty (asking for a friend ;))? Your PhD project “Designing Zoöpolis” offers a multi-species perspective of Istanbul and imagines the city as a space where specifically feline populations are not “managed” or “controlled” but cared for. My question is twofold: How would you say did your engagement with critical posthumanism influence your analysis of interspecies care, but also challenged your view of the formats and formalities of academic research, its infrastructures, institutions, and rhythms?
Burak: First of all, I wish you all the best in completing your PhD! A PhD is indeed a space of new possibilities. I’m slowly coming to understand that stitching new connections, as we are doing right now, is essential to proliferate the abundant potential of this process. It helps us combat the isolating experience of PhD process and models academic practices grounded in care, listening and peer support, as well as providing platform to those who may learn from the experiences of others.
In my PhD project, I centered my fieldwork around a designerly intervention called “the cat house” built and maintained by citizens of Istanbul for the community cats in the city who they care for. While these interventions are intended and practiced as acts of care, my participants’ narratives also revealed a community-driven spatial population management. Their practices can be interpreted as a decentralized attempt at managing feline population with a clear spatial aspect, as one result of which they shape the public space to accommodate community cats. Hence, designing Zoöpolis. My analysis of interspecies care has been shaped by my engagement with critical posthumanisms as well as with critical disability studies. First of all, these frameworks broadened my understanding not only of who we include in our theorizing in design (as in challenging the humanist notion of ‘Man’ and expanding our stakeholders), but also of normative notions of ability and dependency and the caring designerly responses that arise. For instance, I found that perceptions of (dis)ability is a major driver in designing Zoöpolis, as spatial accommodation of animals is highly dependent upon whether an animal is deemed able to adapt to urban life. Another point concerns conducting fieldwork. I was privileged to witness very emotional moments of some of my participants, some of whom lacked support networks and faced stigma due to their ongoing care. At times, the interview became an opportunity for the participant to process the hardships in their caregiving or to mourn their previous animal companions. It was in such moments where I had to step outside my researcher role, and provide care simply by being present and listening to the participant who needed it from someone who cared enough to study this topic. Had I not developed an awareness on the burden of care, and on neurodivergence, I could have easily neglected the emergent needs of my participants, justifying this simply being outside the scope of my research, thereby running the risk of conducting an exploitative fieldwork that could leave participants feel depleted. I believe that studying such a topic while being engaged to critical posthumanisms as well as critical disability studies resulted in conducting fieldwork and theorizing grounded in a much-needed critical and ethical lens.
You’re also right that engaging with critical posthumanisms may be challenging in terms of the formats and formalities of academic research. I think the posthuman approaches to design are still in infancy. At first glance, outsiders may deem this convergence as a popular area of research, without giving enough consideration on the theoretical and methodological risk-taking such research requires. For researchers venturing into these territories, the path can feel uncertain. This is where mentorship and experience sharing become highly important.
This convergence of design and posthumanism may also face difficulty in terms of positioning due to its novelty. This is where institutional barriers and boundary work become highly visible for those experiencing it. Academia claims to welcome novelty, but it may resist it in practice. That tension, I think, is where posthuman approaches to design finds both its challenge and its necessity, as it dares to push the boundaries of existing design scholarship.
Johanna: Thank you so much—the feeling of isolation is definitely real, not only during the dissertation process but in academia more broadly. At the same time, I feel that the D+PH Network exemplifies the ways this work can connect me to people I genuinely think of as colleagues, even though we are not at the same institution, not even in the same country, and have never actually met in person.
What I find especially compelling is how you foreground how critical posthumanisms dislodge normative ideas of the human, and how judgments of animal worth often hinge on a perceived proximity to these normative ideas of humanness that we see as prerequisites for belonging and care.
One final question: over the course of our interview, 2026 has arrived—happy new year! Is there anything you’re particularly looking forward to?
Burak: Happy new year! Looking ahead, I’m hoping for the privilege of staying with questions to continue to explore, however brief these exploratory moments may be, amid the ongoing pressure for academic productivity. I’m especially looking forward to conversations like ours, which are not grounded in physical proximity or shared institutions, but in intersecting coordinates of emerging interest and mutual intellectual curiosity, such as critical posthumanisms. I’m hopeful that such exchanges can open space for further collaborations that quietly support our work in academia and beyond.
What about you? What are you looking forward to? Thank you for this conversation! It’s been a pleasure to think (and write) with you.
Johanna: This year is a big one for me personally because I am really looking forward to finishing the PhD and then figuring out what kind of life exists beyond it, what new projects potentially come out of it, and where I’ll go to pursue them. Big, big changes ahead! Thank you so much for this interview and hope to cross paths many times in the future!