I believe situated knowledges and positionality creates an inevitable bias when it comes to analysis, so let me tell you mine.

I grew up in South East London, in a lower class family dependent on government support. My parents came to the UK as asylum seekers (from Limassol in '63 & Episkopi in '74), facing the fascist group National Front at their height. While the benefits systems gave us financial privileges and allowed us access to opportunities, those same systems have been destroyed by over a decade of austerity, and the generational trauma continues.

I grew up bilingual, visiting Cyprus as much as we could to maintain our connection to our culture, which was slowly withering away. The older I got, the more I viewed what happened to our parents and grandparents as a responsibility to find justice. As the first generation of the diaspora post '74, we have access to information and political participation that is far too painful for our elders to digest. The flag in my logo is based on the idea of kintsugi - the Japanese art of fixing broken objects with gold (the UN buffer zone), improving on the original. The purple represents feminism, as a gender perspective is always necessary, and the combination of blue and red, the colours of the nations that have always monopolised us and profitted from our trauma. The combination is a unification of our communities without hegemony.

The more I travelled, the more I engaged politically, the more I noticed the Global South (global majority) has in common. Our natural resources being exploited for the profit of a few, imperial powers dividing to conquer and leaving generations of victims in their wake. So, I decided to study again, to find ways to prevent these powers having access to exploited countries. I have devoted myself to dismantling systems that enabled what happened to my family, so that nobody else has to suffer what millions of refugees do.

So, my values are in anti-hierarchical, anti-racist, feminist, intersectional, decolonial, pluriversal, victim-centred thought prioritising relations over categories. My perspective is lower socio-economic class, neurodivergent, queer, racialised and traumatized.

I have informed my views outside of euro-centrism, being largely inspired by Latin American socialism. Living in Peru and Brazil, speaking Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish, my thought processes have always been developed alongside victims of colonial institutions.

After 8 years of 3D animation experience, I have converted into a passionate global biodiversity conservationist. I am currently completing a PhD in Environmental Social Science, dedicated to researching eco-cultural communities and bioregional solidarity.

Join me in dismantling systems of oppression from the root (literally), starting with the exploitation of natural resources leading to the refugee crisis, political and climate.

I'm Ceylan (she/her). I'm a queer, neurodivergent, Turkish Cypriot woman and trauma survivor living with C-PTSD

About Me