Berna Toprak is a PhD candidate in Political Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. Her interests lie at the intersection of gender & sexuality studies, critical race studies, critical Muslim Studies and psychoanalysis. Her current project investigates the configuration of the ‘Muslim Question’ through discourses of gendered violence, with a special focus on racialized masculinities. By combining discourse analysis and an ethnographic approach she aims to understand how Muslim men are problematized, what this problematization produces and, inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois, how this is experienced by Muslim men. This project is part of the larger NWO-VICI project EnGendering Europe’s Muslim Question and is supervised by prof. dr. Sarah Bracke and prof. dr. Nadia Fadil.
Berna completed a BA in Communications Sciences at the University of Amsterdam and a research MA in Gender & Ethnicity at Utrecht University.