Begüm Başdaş was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School. She received her PhD in Geography at University of California Los Angeles and her MA in Art History from UCR. Her BA was in Sociology at Boğaziçi University, Turkey. Her research interests are migration, human rights, political theory, gender and sexuality in EU and Turkey. Her research “In the Making of New Europe: Embodied Politics of Borderlands” studies the reconstruction of EU borderlands and how the material landscapes of the Greek hotspot islands have changed since 2015. Earlier, she was an Einstein Fellow at HU Berlin where she worked on the spatial politics of solidarity among Afghan refugees and rights defenders in Greece. She worked as a Human Rights Campaigner at Amnesty International Turkey. She produces a TV program titled “On the Move with Begüm Başdaş” to discuss current issues on migration with experts.