One by one, the academicians who signed the petition for peace in Turkey stand on trial for ‘propaganda of terrorism’. In the past year, many have lost their teaching positions and most of their civil rights, while war policies continue to unfold. They are not alone, around the world, thinkers and activists are being criminalized for acts of solidarity. Drawing on individual and collective actions within universities in Turkey, India, the USA, and Europe we try to think about the role of researchers within states of emergency. What is the relation between theory and practice within these movements? How can we, as researchers, deal with violence, precarity, or with our own affects while being intellectually productive? 

Çağla E. Aykaç currently teaches in the Departments of Geography and Gender studies of Geneva University and in the CCC Research Master at HEAD Geneva. She holds a PhD in sociology and her research focuses on social movements, racisms and nationalism, Islam in Europe, and contemporary Turkey. 
Navigating Turbulences (NT) names the Public Seminar, organized by the Research-Based CCC Master Program, one of three Masters of the Visual Arts Department at HEAD – Genève. In 2017/18, NT will engage with the question of ‘practice’ in relation to ‘research’: ‘Research’ in the arts today is a code-word to enter study programs, biennales, PhD-grants in the arts, museum-reforms, funding applications and makes students pay tuition fee. Let’s re-investigate the politics of ‘research’, therefore, through speaking about and making practices. We have in mind a network of practices that departs from life’s complexity. All sessions emerge from the CCC-Curriculum with its faculty members, guests and students. The NT follows the idea of ‘colloquium’: from literally “a speaking together”: from com- “together” + -loquium “speaking”. Under the condition of turbulence, it is knowledge that is in crisis which makes it necessary for us to think together, to think otherwise.