Rukaya Al Zayani

About Rukaya Al Zayani

Rukaya Al Zayani is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Gender Studies at Örebro University, working within the Feminist Violence Studies research environment. Their doctoral project examines the intersections of queer life, precarity, and gendered violence in Turkey, with a particular focus on how violence moves across online and offline spaces, and across time.

Rukaya's current research centres on two interconnected sites: online queer sex work in Turkey, and the spatial dimensions of violence targeting queer refugees — including Syrian and Iranian refugees in the country. 

Rukaya has conducted sustained ethnographic fieldwork in Istanbul across multiple research projects. As a Swedish Institute Fellow, they received a grant from the Swedish Institute in Istanbul, where they were based during the first year of their PhD fieldwork. They previously served as a Research Assistant on Transcity Istanbul, a British Academy-funded project in collaboration with Istanbul Bilgi University and Queen's University Belfast.