Dr Metin Koca
British Academy International Fellow

Profile

Biography

BA – Bilkent University
MSc – London School of Economics and Political Science
MRes – European University Institute
PhD – European University Institute

My research interests lie at the intersection of cultural studies and political sociology, with a particular focus on cultural change and reproduction, as well as the politics of difference, recognition, and tolerance. I aim to explore how societies navigate moral and ethical dilemmas, especially in contested domains where values are shaped, negotiated, politicised and institutionalised overtly. Methodologically, I combine ethnographic and archival approaches to capture the lived practices and historical trajectories behind political struggles over meaning and legitimacy.

I joined the Department of Sociology in March 2025 as a British Academy International Fellow and the Principal Investigator for the project, “Nonversion: The Conversion of Young Turks to Non-Religion” (IF24\100616). At its core, I address a puzzle rooted in heated public debates over young individuals’ religious socialisation and education. Addressing several gaps in scholarship on secularity and Islamism in predominantly Muslim societies, my research employs digital ethnography and in-depth interviews to explore the contexts, social interactions, and critical junctures through which young individuals come to identify as non-religious in Turkey.

This project builds on my broader engagement with the politics of culture. My doctoral research at the European University Institute (EUI) was a study of cultural change amid mass political struggles over values in Turkey. Through a cross-temporal analysis of three highly contested cultural landscapes—LGBTQ visibility in the entertainment sector, religious minorities’ funerals, and women’s rights in relation to clothing—I examined the dialectical encounters between the self and the other.

The research culminated in my monograph, entitled "Tracing Cultural Change in Turkey's Experience of Democratization: Unexpected Dialogues on Intolerance" (London: Routledge, 2023), which questions whether democracy can be sustained without a shared set of overarching “democratic values” and in the face of persistent value conflicts. I argue that rights, freedoms, capabilities, and social norms can be disentangled from the expectation of conceptual compromise, suggesting that democracy does not necessitate value agreement but rather the acknowledgement of value disagreements before negotiating the rest. This monograph received an honourable mention in the Young Social Scientists Award from the Turkish Association of Social Scientists.

My interest in dialectical encounters continued with my ERC-funded postdoctoral research as part of a broader project on youth radicalisation. In the ISLAM-OPHOB-ISM Advanced Grant Project (No: 785934), which analysed Islamist and nativist radicalisations in Europe, I made peer-reviewed publications, wrote reports and policy briefs, organised events, and delivered numerous invited talks. As part of these dissemination activities, I examined the ideological, socioeconomic, and spatial dimensions of violent and non-violent radicalisation.

Alongside my research, I held several teaching positions and engaged in various teaching activities at English-speaking universities, delivering semester-long courses and seminars on religion and the human sciences, violent and non-violent radicalisation, the European Union, and Middle Eastern politics.

Research

Overview

My research interests lie within the following areas: 

• Cultural Change and Reproduction
• Politics of Difference, Recognition and Tolerance
• Sociology of Religion and Non-religion
• Morality, Ethics and Values
• Ethnographic and Archival Methods

I work as the Principal Investigator for the project “Nonversion: The Conversion of Young Turks to Non-Religion” (IF24\100616), hosted at the University of York with Dr Anna Strhan as the UK sponsor. Funded by the British Academy in partnership with the Royal Society, this project examines how young individuals in Turkey, having undergone religious socialisation, come to identify as non-religious. In the context of the Turkish government’s campaign to raise young people as pious Muslim subjects and its view on social media as a potential threat to their religious identity, the project adopts a combination of digital ethnography and in-depth interviews. Given the increasingly prevalent religious educational environments which limit schooling options for the lower social strata, the project will focus on young adults from lower social-class backgrounds.

The research project aims to 1) address top-down religious reform and conservation projects in the Middle East, illustrated by the current Turkish government’s politics of religion, 2) advance theoretical and methodological innovation in the sociology of religion and contribute to growing research interest in religion in youth studies, 3) advance the multidisciplinary literature on non-religion, which has to date largely focused on (post)Christian contexts, and 4) enhance the knowledge base on how religiosity interacts with gender and class in shaping young people’s identities.

Publications

Selected publications

• Koca, M. (2024) ‘Networked social movements and radicalisation: yellow vests’ cross-ideological horizon for underrepresented groups’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 32(3), pp. 643–657.
• Koca, M. (2023) Tracing Cultural Change in Turkey’s Experience of Democratization: Unexpected Dialogues on Intolerance. London: Routledge.
• Koca, M. (2023) ‘Juxtaposing violent extremism and critical radicalism in Europe: the role of reflexive awareness in pursuit of religious purity and cultural essence’, Politics, Religion & Ideology, 24(3), pp. 352–376.
• Koca, M. (2023) ‘Religiosities in a Globalised Market: Migrant-Origin Muslim Europeans’ Self-Positioning Beyond the Sending and Receiving States’ Politics of Religion’, in Nativist and Islamist Radicalism. Routledge, pp. 199–225.
• Koca, M. (2017) ‘On the borders of cultural relativism, nativism, and international society: a promotion of Islamist democracy in the Middle East after the Arab uprisings’, All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace, 6(2), pp. 43–63.