Global Populism
Research Cluster C0-Leader
Sefika Kumral: s_kumral@uncg.edu
Sefika Kumral is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research topics include ethnic relations and conflict, extreme right and fascism, social protest and political economy. Her current research focuses on the rising tide of political violence and authoritarian populism in Turkey by concentrating on the causes and consequences of anti-Kurdish communal violence that erupted in the 21st century. She has published articles and book chapters on the relationship between geopolitics and classical fascism; authoritarian populism in the Global South; transformation of global income inequality; and dynamics of global social unrest.
Research Cluster C0-Leader
Zachary Levenson: zblevens@uncg.edu
Zachary Levenson is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg, where he studies struggles over housing distribution in postcolonial cities. His current research focuses on post-apartheid South Africa, where, despite a constitution that guarantees access to housing, the government routinely evicts urban land occupiers. He is completing his first book, Delivery and Dispossession: Land Occupation and Eviction in the Post-Apartheid City, an ethnographic account of the politics of squatting in Cape Town over the past decade. Related work has appeared in Urban Studies, the Journal of Agrarian Change, International Sociology, and elsewhere. He also writes about the global populist revival in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis.