The Essential Conversations in Business and Human Rights (BHR) organizing team (Tricia Olsen, Annie Snelson-Powell, Kathleen Rehbein, Judith Schrempf-Stirling, Harry Van Buren, Michelle Westermann-Behaylo) are happy to announce our next reading group event on November 19, 2025, 4pm (UK time).
Dr Elif Nur Duman-Cogen of University of Bath School of Management.
Title: "Refugee Women in the Global South: Understanding Stigmatised Work and Agency Within Their Cultural Context"
Based on her ethnography of Syrian refugee women in Istanbul, Elif will discuss how to understand work and agency within their own ethical tradition. She will share insights into what domestic work and cleaning mean in the Syrian ethical tradition, and how various forms of agency, such as the agency of silence, are exercised by women to rebuild their honorable sense of self while performing doubly stigmatized work.
Reading list
Agency of silence: Female Syrian refugee workers and the reconstitution of the post-war self