{"id":18499,"date":"2026-10-12T13:03:27","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T12:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/nubsstaffblog\/?p=18499"},"modified":"2026-10-12T13:03:27","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T12:03:27","slug":"leadership-work-and-organisation-research-seminar-dr-elif-duman-cogen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/nubsstaffblog\/2026\/10\/12\/leadership-work-and-organisation-research-seminar-dr-elif-duman-cogen\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership, Work and Organisation Research Seminar \u2013 Dr Elif Duman-Cogen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Title<\/strong>: The Agentive Refugee Woman: Caring Recognition and Religious Agency in Precarious Work<\/p>\n

Date<\/strong>: Wednesday 4 November 2026<\/p>\n

Time<\/strong>: 15:00 to 16:30<\/p>\n

Venue<\/strong>: <\/strong>NUBS.2.03<\/p>\n

If you would like to attend, please register using the following link<\/p>\n

The Agentive Refugee Woman: Caring Recognition and Religious Agency in Precarious Work<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaker<\/strong>: <\/strong>Dr Elif Duman-Cogen<\/p>\n

Elif is a Lecturer in Management at Newcastle University Business School. She is an anthropologist based in management and organisation studies whose research focuses on one of the most pressing challenges of our time: war and forced migration. Elif explores the lives of those shaped by conflict and displacement, with a particular focus on how female refugees rebuild their lives after war, trauma, and exile. Her research examines the forms of agency exercised by Syrian refugee women in Turkey, exploring how they re-establish honourable lives while working in precarious, informal labour markets. More broadly, Elif\u2019s scholarship explores \u2018refugee\u2019 working lives, embodiment, cultural and religious forms of agency, stigma, dirty work, and the experiences of \u2018people-who-move\u2019. Her philosophical inquiry focuses on subject formation \u2013 the processes of becoming shaped through the multiple attachments that constitute our being.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/business\/people\/profile\/elifduman-cogen.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Abstract: <\/strong><\/p>\n

Organizational refugee studies is increasingly focusing on workers residing in the non-Western contexts. Largely working in informal economies, female refugees are among the most oppressed members of this precarious and often exploited workforce. They are widely regarded as passive and non-agentive, a dominant image that this article challenges. We draw on data from an ethnographic study of Syrian Muslim female refugees exiled in T\u00fcrkiye, who are employed in the highly stigmatized profession of cleaning. We show that they refuse the degradation of such work, reject cultural norms that shun cleaners, do not recognise themselves as refugees and insist on being accorded recognition as their most valorised self: the honourable woman. We ask: what forms of recognition practices enable this insistence on recognition within their own terms? Inspired by Saba Mahmood\u2019s work, we suggest their agency arises from practices of caring recognition, notably in compassionate recognition from God and practices grounded in care, relationality and connectivity. This contributes, first, to developing a theory of caring recognition of and from the Global South and, second, to extending understandings of religious forms of agency among refugee women engaged in precarious work in informal economies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Title: The Agentive Refugee Woman: Caring Recognition and Religious Agency in Precarious Work Date: Wednesday 4 November 2026 Time: 15:00 to 16:30 Venue: NUBS.2.03 If…
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