Erdem Avsar is an award-winning educator, researcher, theatre-maker, and translator. His research is transdisciplinary and cuts across cultural sociology, sociology of media and the arts, performance studies, gender and queer theory, creative methods and methodologies, and politics of representation in popular culture and media.

Exploring how creative methods and methodologies can reshape public discourse and offer alternative ways of imagining and communicating just futures, particularly in illiberal and authoritarian contexts, Erdem designs and leads arts-based participatory social research projects in the UK and beyond - particularly engaging with urgent political issues and inequalities, including gender-based violence, LGBTQIA+ rights, and migration-related injustices.

His doctoral research in Sociology and Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow has looked at the queer politics of theatre-making in Turkey and dramaturgies of grief and hope. 

He has lectured and led workshops and seminars internationally, and has contributed to curriculum design and teaching across postgraduate and summer school provision at the University of Glasgow. His teaching spans Sociology Level 1, the sociology of gender and sexualities, and the sociology of the media. He has also worked as RA as part of the British Academy-funded research project, LLAMIS (Language Learning and Migrant 'Integration' in Scotland), co-led by Dr Francesca Stella and Prof Rebecca Kay. He was the co-PI of a British Council Creative Collaborations-funded project (2023-24), Performance Ecologies: Towards a Good Life.

He is a researcher in residence and affiliate artist at UNESCO RIELA collaborating with the network on multilingual and critical performative projects. His theatre work has been shown in Scotland, Germany, and Italy. I was the 2019 recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award (University of Bristol Theatre Collection). His sociological fiction and multimedia critical-creative work has appeared in clavmag, Lune Journal, in the anthology The Book of Bad Betties (Bad Betty Press), and in Collaborative Playwriting edited by Paul Castagno (Routledge).

He is currently working on a monograph, a co-authored dialogic article on queer experiences of urban walking, and a relational-dramaturgical mapping project investigating how academic infrastructures shape utopian pedagogies.

He serves as a peer-reviewer for national and international funding bodies including British Academy and ESRC.

Gender, sexualities, and queerness,

Performance studies and queer dramaturgies,

Sociology of the media, arts, and literature,

Creative and participatory methods, methodologies, and pedagogies,

Sociological approaches to utopia.

Research groups

• Media, Culture & Society

List by: Type | Date

SGSSS Advanced Training Fund (ATF) with Professor Anna Feigenbaum for Advanced Training in Embodied Research for
Social Scientists: Creative, Collaborative and Participatory Methods (2025-2026)

Sociology and Cultural Studies Seed Corn Fund (College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow) (2025) (Co-I on a queer migration pilot study, PI: Dr Francesca Stella)

British Council UK-Turkey Creative Collaborations Grant (2023-2024) (UK Partner and Co-PI)

Kevin Elyot Award, University of Bristol Theatre
Collection (2019)

Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Interdisciplinary PhD Scholarship/Fellowship, College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow (2019-2024)

EU International Plays! Prize (2017), Creative Europe and Quartieri dell'Arte Festival

I supervise Media, Culture & Society PGT projects. While I am not currently able to take on primary supervision for PhD students, I am happy to discuss possibilities for second or third supervision in relation to my research interests.

I teach on the MSc in Media, Culture and Society programme and co-convene Producing News (MSc in Media, Communications and International Journalism)

I regularly run creative writing workshops and deliver masterclasses in playwriting, screenwriting, and media both in the UK and internationally.

Prizes, awards & distinctions

• 2025: Global Talent (Exceptional Promise) in Culture, Media and Performance Studies (British Academy)

Grant committees & research advisory boards

• 2025: ESRC, ESRC Assessor College
• 2025: British Academy, Early Career Researcher Network Seed Fund Reviewers