Onur Bakiner

Education

Ph.D. Yale University, Department of Political Science (2011)
M.Phil. Yale University, Department of Political Science (2007)
B.A. Bogazici University, Istanbul, Double Major in Political Science and Economics (2005)

Areas of Interest

Transitional Justice • Latin American Politics • Comparative Politics 
• Politics of Memory • Politics of Human Rights 
• History of Political Thought

Bio

Onur Bakiner is Assistant Professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University. He completed his dissertation, entitled “Coming to Terms with the Past: Power, Memory and Legitimacy in Truth Commissions,” in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. This research project, awarded department and university distinction, addresses questions of transitional justice with insights from scholarship on social memory, history and political legitimacy. It combines comparative qualitative research on truth commissions (specifically in Chile and Peru) with reflections on the ethics and politics of the “public use of history” and social memory.

His research and teaching interests include memory politics, transitional justice, Latin American politics, and normative political theory. His article, entitled “From Denial to Reluctant Dialogue: the Chilean Military’s Confrontation with Human Rights (1990-2006)” was published in the International Journal of Transitional Justice in 2010.

Teaching

Fall 2011

IS 101 Introduction to International Studies
IS 806 State Building and State Failure

Spring 2012

IS 409 Special Topics: Transitional Justice
IS 807 Complex Emergencies

Publications

Articles

2010 “From Denial to Reluctant Dialogue: the Chilean Military's Confrontation with Human Rights (1990-2006)”, International Journal of Transitional Justice 2010 4(1): 47-66

Book Reviews

2007 Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy: Islamist Women in Turkish Politics, by Yeşim Arat (State University of New York Press, 2005), in Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 7 (1) (2007): 177 – 207

2011 Before the Shining Path: Politics in Rural Ayacucho, 1895-1980. Jaymie Patricia Heilman, (Stanford University Press, 2010) in Latin American Politics and Society 53(2) (2011): 178-181

Reference Works

Forthcoming “Truth Commissions” in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, Michael Gibbons, William Connolly, Diana Coole (eds.) (Sage, 2012)

Curriculum Vitae (October 2011)