Banu Senay

My research areas include phenomenological anthropology, music and cultural politics, Islam and subjectivity, and transnationalism. My current research on Islamic art pedagogies in Istanbul explores the effects of skill acquisition, engaging with important debates in anthropology around learning, self-formation and ethics, specifically in relation to Sufi Islam and to one of its most significant dimensions, music. I have secondary research expertise in the areas of migration, transnationalism and diasporic politics. My first monograph ‘Beyond Turkey’s Borders’ explored the topic of Turkish transnationalism and the Turkish State’s mobilizing for domestic and international  purposes of its migrants abroad (I.B.Tauris, 2013). 

My most recent research projects include: Revitalizing Islamic Arts: Nationalism, Islamism and Cultural Politics in Contemporary Turkey, Ethical Pedagogies: The Teaching and Learning of Sufi Music in Istanbul,  Turkish Skilled Migration and Brain Drain to Australia, and Political and Religious Transnational Flows between Turkey and Australia

I arrived at Macquarie in 2017, after a three-year post-doctoral fellowship in Anthropology at the University of Melbourne. I received my PhD from the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University in 2010. 

In the anthropology programme at Macquarie I teach in the areas of anthropology of religion and fieldwork methods.

I am available to supervise post-graduate projects in a number of areas of social anthropology, notably on Islam, music, cultural politics, and contemporary Turkey, as well as in areas of migration, nationalism, and transnationalism.