This event is hosted by the Sociology, Film & Visual Art research cluster.
📅 Date: May 1st 2025
📍 Location: Sociology Seminar Room,
Old Cavendish Laboratory, Free School Ln.
🕒 Time: 5pm – 7pm
🎟️ Free and open to all, registration via Luma.
About the film
No.910 (2024) explores the afterlives of the 2023 earthquakes in Antakya, tracing how those relegated to the periphery – both geographically and politically – navigate spatial and temporal limbo whilst asserting their claims to recognition and justice. Against the backdrop of contemporary Turkey’s political and economic crises, the film examines the erasure of marginalised communities and the contestations that emerge in response.
No.910 was part of the European Union Delegation to Türkiye’s Human Rights Film Programme and has been screened at the ICA, the British Institute at Ankara, and the UK House of Commons. The film was created by Erkan Gürsel, a researcher and filmmaker who is currently pursuing an MPhil in the Sociology of Marginality and Exclusion at the University of Cambridge.
The screening (48-minutes) will be followed by a discussion with the filmmaker Erkan Gürsel (University of Cambridge), Dr. Zeina al-Azmeh (University of Cambridge), and Sheida Kiran (BBC Eye Investigations), examining the role of film as a sociological method with which to amplify voices enduring dispossession and displacement in the region.
About the panellists
Erkan Gürsel is a researcher and filmmaker based in the UK, focusing on state violence in post-disaster Turkey, particularly in Antakya. He is currently pursuing an MPhil in Sociology at the University of Cambridge and holds an MSc in Global Migration from UCL and a BA (Hons) in Middle Eastern Studies from SOAS. He also teaches in UCL’s Geography Department, leading seminars on migration, displacement, and carceral violence.
Gürsel integrates creative practice into his research, particularly through opinion pieces and filmmaking. His documentary No.910 (2024) explores the impact of the February 2023 earthquakes on his family in Antioch, examining state violence and the politics of nostalgia.. He continues to work with visual and sonic methodologies.
Sheida Kiran is a British-Turkish-Iranian documentary filmmaker and composer based in London. Driven by her passion for ethnographic storytelling, she focuses on documenting women’s issues in the Middle East. Her award-winning student film ‘Harvesting Our Tea’ (2021) was commissioned by BBC Our World in 2022, shortlisted for a student BAFTA and Grierson award, and won the LA Women’s Voices Now and Porto Femme Film Festival best documentary categories. She has since been reporting on the earthquakes that happened in Turkey and released her current affairs film ‘Turkey’s Earthquake: Those Who Stayed’ on BBC iPlayer. She is currently producing documentaries for BBC Eye Investigations and directing a film funded by the BFI Made of Truth Fund.
Through her experience of scoring for film, she often uses music as a tool to build narratives, and composes the music to her films with musical project ‘Entropies’. Their work has been supported by Help Musicians, Bert Jansch Foundation and FUJIFILM UK – and they have performed Sheida’s film scores in over 100 performances across the UK.
Zeina Al Azmeh is a Research and Teaching Associate in Political Sociology at the Department of Sociology and a Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge. She is also a research associate at the Centre for Governance and Human Rights, University of Cambridge. With a multidisciplinary approach that bridges cultural and political sociology, Zeina’s research centres on the experiences of academics and intellectuals in exile. Her expertise lies in the political sociology of knowledge production, memorialisation, and migration, particularly focusing on migrations resulting from revolutions and counterrevolutions.
In addition to her academic pursuits, Zeina is also a trained musician, holding a bachelor’s degree in piano performance and a master’s degree in composition. She completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge in 2021, where she conducted an in-depth investigation into the role of exiled Syrian intellectuals in civil resistance since 2011.
View this event on Luma.
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