Ceylan Begüm Yildiz

Dr Ceylan Begüm Yıldız PhD

Lecturer in Law

Ceylan is a critical legal scholar. Her research sits at the intersection of law, criminology, politics, philosophy and sociology, and focuses on state violence, legal violence, accountability, protests, performativity and subjectivity. Prior to joining Greenwich, she taught at the University of Westminster, the University of Sussex, King’s College London, and Birkbeck College.

She holds a PhD from Birkbeck College. Her doctorate dissertation explored the mythical formation of the state, the ghostliness of its violence and the impact of stately myths, fantasies and ghosts on public demands and legal processes of accountability. Her research is due to be published by Routledge under the title of State Violence and Legal Accountability: The Wait for Justice.

Law

Responsibilities within the university
  • Lecturer in Law.
  • Client Interviewing Coordinator.

Recognition
  • Active member of the national and international critical legal scholarship community
  • Socio-Legal Studies Association
  • Nomos: Centre for International Research on Law, Culture and Power
  • Associate Fellowship HEA

Research / Scholarly interests
  • State violence, police violence and political violence
  • Legal violence and legal accountability processes
  • Public demands of accountability, protests and disobedient subjects
  • Legal and political performativity
  • Ghosts, myths, fantasies and fetishes of political and legal power
  • Feminist and critical race theories of law

Recent publications
Book

2025. State Violence and Legal Accountability: The Wait for Justice. Routledge (in publication).

Book chapters

2020. A State in Anomie: An Analysis of Modern Turkey’s States of Exception. Cercel, C.S., Fusco, G. & Lavis, S. (Eds) States of Exception: Law, History, Theory. Routledge. 167-183.

Articles

2018. Diyarbakır’s Objects of Memory: “Restoration” of the Kurdish City into a Biblokent. London Journal of Critical Thought 2 (1): 50-61.

Other

2020. ‘Eine Reflexion über die außergewöhnliche politisch-rechtsstaatliche Kultur der Türkei’ Trans. Christine Schweitzer. Friedens Forum 6: 36- 37.

Presentations
  • 2023 Stream Convenor, Hiding in/from Law, Sanctuaries, Critical Legal Conference, Durham.
  • 2023 ‘The Legal Aftermath of Police Violence’, Sanctuaries, Critical Legal Conference, Durham.
  • 2022 ‘Awaiting Justice: State Violence on Trial’, Liminalities, Critical Legal Conference, Norway.
  • 2022 ‘Awaiting Justice: The legal afterlife of police violence’, Law, Authoritarianism, Revolution: Critical Legal Theory for Troubled Times, Nomos Inaugural Conference, Poland.
  • 2021 ‘Writing against the ghostly state’ University of Kent Centre for Critical Thought, Canterbury/Online.
  • 2021 ‘Deadly Fate: State violence and its unaccountability’ Working with Benjamin on Law Workshop, Berlin/Online.
  • 2019 ‘The (im)possibility of holding the state to account’ Birkbeck School of Law Cumberland Lodge Weekend, Egham.
  • 2017 ‘Turkey’s Leading State of Emergency: round-the-clock curfews’ Critical Legal Conference, University of Warwick.