Profile
Özge Savaş
Birth:
1987
Training Location(s):
PhD, University of Michigan (2020)
MS, University of Michigan (2016)
MA, Koç University (2015)
BS, Middle East Technical University (METU) (2010)
Primary Affiliation(s):
Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont (2020–2024)
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts (2024–present)
Psychology’s Feminist Voices Oral History Interview:
Career Focus:
Critical social psychology; decolonial feminist psychology; intersectionality; migration, citizenship, and political belonging; community-based and participatory research.
Biography
Dr. Özge Savaş describes her feminist identity as having long been “in the background” and cultivated by the women in her family. She considers her mother and grandmother influential in the development of her feminism, even though they did not identify themselves as feminists while she was growing up. Her mother’s own lack of educational opportunities led her to become very invested in Özge and her sister’s own education. Savaş considered the sisterhood formed between herself, her mother, and her sister essential to her own survival in a fairly patriarchal home environment.
Savaş has been fascinated with feminist studies and disillusioned with the “individualistic nature of Psychology” since she was an undergraduate student in Türkiye. Primarily due to the individualistic orientations of the theoretical models exported from the Global North, she “did not find herself in the curriculum” and become critical of the field from early on in her educational journey. She became interested in feminist work related to subjectivity, and in rethinking methodology from a transnational feminist perspective.
After a long period of disenchantment with the discipline, Savaş found herself studying critical and decolonial psychology, which were not welcomed amongst scholars in Türkiye. While Savaş was initially interested in clinical psychology, she found that it was not reflective of the reality she experienced, so she pursued a Master’s in developmental psychology to study gender socialization in childhood instead. However, she had a hard time finding support from supervisors for these ideas, and ended up studying language and gesture development of infants. It wasn’t until she went to University of Michigan for her PhD that she found her way into gender and feminist psychology, where she could focus her research on gender, systemic understandings, and intersectional feminism.
Savaş’ early childhood experiences and family relations, as well as her sensitivity to power dynamics, all led to her interest in studying gender. While Savaş had support to pursue her research interests during her PhD, she felt that explicitly decolonial thinking was missing from her program, so she undertook to learn it on her own. Having to insist that her ideas were worthwhile pursuing during her undergraduate and Master’s work, Savaş has become the type of teacher and mentor who encourages students to pursue their passions. While navigating academic spaces, Savaş has become aware of how different types of audiences react differently to different types of work, teaching her that curation is important.
According to Savaş, decolonial feminist thinking and work centers on relationality, something she understands to be missing in traditional feminist work, which can be “still stuck in binaries.” In her view, applying intersectional, decolonial lenses in research challenges categorical-based thinking and allows for more comprehensive understandings. In her view, decolonial feminism’s most important contribution to Psychology is the diversification of methodologies, which challenge binaries and allow for relational qualitative thinking. Methodologies such as kindred narrative inquiry, developed by Savaş when working with interpreters and immigrant communities, allow for feminist or decolonial interpretations and challenge these binaries. To Savas, a “feminist decolonial lens provides a way of thinking about power dynamics which impact(s) how we see ourselves and others”; she considers decolonial feminism as a “methodological way” of seeing things, which has been crucial in her research on forced migration and refugee resettlement.
Since she was a graduate student, Savaş has been involved with the Global Feminisms Project, “an oral history interviews archive with individuals who identify themselves as working on behalf of issues related to women and gender in different national contexts.” She has worked to expand the archive to include feminists from Türkiye, as well as feminisms from all other parts of the world. In addition to creating lesson plans for the archive and using the archive in her teaching, which features feminist decolonial psychological perspectives, she has emphasized the alienation of voices from the Global South as one of the current challenges in the field of Psychology (where even in spaces that foster qualitative inquiry, conversations still centre voices from the Global North), centering decolonial and intersectional work in the field.
As a scholar facing the unique challenges of living far from home, Savaş emphasizes the importance of a strong support system, including “friends and collaborators who have become family and the communities she has collaborated with,”. In her view, “how you’ve been mentored affects how you mentor.” She is grateful for the feminist scholars who have mentored her directly, such as Abigail Stewart, Kay Deaux and Sara McClelland, as well as the “vicarious” mentorship she received from her mentors’ own mentors. Savaş encourages students to persist on ideas they are passionate about, even if others tell you they are not worthy, and emphasizes the importance of self-reflexivity as a “people’s strongest weapon.” Despite the challenges faced by early career academics, such as a precarious job market and having to move around, difficulties maintaining links and involvement with communities, her advice to young academics is: don’t get frustrated—your connections will help you and you’ll find your place and rebuild again and again.
By Maria Jose Pernas Rodriguez (2025)
To cite this article, see Credits
Selected Works
Savaş, Ö., Duncan, L., Smith, H., & Stewart, A.J. (2024) The baggage and the benefits that travel with the F Word: Transnational feminism and its discontents. Analysis of Social Issues and Public Policy,1(31), https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12404
Savaş, Ö., * & Dutt, A.* (2023) Decolonial and intersectional feminist psychology for the future of (forced) migration and refugee resettlement. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2023.100124
Savaş, Ö.* Klein, V., * & Conley, T. (2023) Epistemic exclusion and invisibility in sex research: Revisiting the WEIRD dichotomy. The Journal of Sex Research, 1–4. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2023.2208091
Savaş, Ö., Caulfield, S., Smith, H.**, House, M.**, & Stewart, A. J. (2022) Vulnerability and empowerment on the ground: Activist perspectives from the Global Feminisms Project. Feminism & Psychology, 1-18. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535221139135
Klein, V., * Savaş, Ö., * Conley, T., (2022) How WEIRD and androcentric is sex research? Global Inequities in Study Populations. The Journal of Sex Research,
1-8. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2021.1918050
Savaş, Ö., Greenwood, R. M., Blankenship, B. T., Stewart, A. J., & Deaux, K. (2021) All immigrants are not alike: Intersectionality matters in views of immigrant groups. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 9(1), 86-104. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.5...
Blankenship, B. T., Davis, T., Areguin, M. A., Savaş, Ö., Winter, D. & Stewart, A. J. (2021). Trust and tribulation: Racial identity centrality, institutional trust, and support for candidates in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. Analysis of Social Issues and Public Policy. http://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12256.
Savaş, Ö. & Stewart, A. J. (2019) Alternative pathways to activism: Intersections of social and personal pasts in the narratives of women’s rights activists. Qualitative Psychology, 6(1), 27-46. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.5575
Photo Gallery
Özge Savaş
Birth:
1987
Training Location(s):
PhD, University of Michigan (2020)
MS, University of Michigan (2016)
MA, Koç University (2015)
BS, Middle East Technical University (METU) (2010)
Primary Affiliation(s):
Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont (2020–2024)
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts (2024–present)
Psychology’s Feminist Voices Oral History Interview:
Career Focus:
Critical social psychology; decolonial feminist psychology; intersectionality; migration, citizenship, and political belonging; community-based and participatory research.
Biography
Dr. Özge Savaş describes her feminist identity as having long been “in the background” and cultivated by the women in her family. She considers her mother and grandmother influential in the development of her feminism, even though they did not identify themselves as feminists while she was growing up. Her mother’s own lack of educational opportunities led her to become very invested in Özge and her sister’s own education. Savaş considered the sisterhood formed between herself, her mother, and her sister essential to her own survival in a fairly patriarchal home environment.
Savaş has been fascinated with feminist studies and disillusioned with the “individualistic nature of Psychology” since she was an undergraduate student in Türkiye. Primarily due to the individualistic orientations of the theoretical models exported from the Global North, she “did not find herself in the curriculum” and become critical of the field from early on in her educational journey. She became interested in feminist work related to subjectivity, and in rethinking methodology from a transnational feminist perspective.
After a long period of disenchantment with the discipline, Savaş found herself studying critical and decolonial psychology, which were not welcomed amongst scholars in Türkiye. While Savaş was initially interested in clinical psychology, she found that it was not reflective of the reality she experienced, so she pursued a Master’s in developmental psychology to study gender socialization in childhood instead. However, she had a hard time finding support from supervisors for these ideas, and ended up studying language and gesture development of infants. It wasn’t until she went to University of Michigan for her PhD that she found her way into gender and feminist psychology, where she could focus her research on gender, systemic understandings, and intersectional feminism.
Savaş’ early childhood experiences and family relations, as well as her sensitivity to power dynamics, all led to her interest in studying gender. While Savaş had support to pursue her research interests during her PhD, she felt that explicitly decolonial thinking was missing from her program, so she undertook to learn it on her own. Having to insist that her ideas were worthwhile pursuing during her undergraduate and Master’s work, Savaş has become the type of teacher and mentor who encourages students to pursue their passions. While navigating academic spaces, Savaş has become aware of how different types of audiences react differently to different types of work, teaching her that curation is important.
According to Savaş, decolonial feminist thinking and work centers on relationality, something she understands to be missing in traditional feminist work, which can be “still stuck in binaries.” In her view, applying intersectional, decolonial lenses in research challenges categorical-based thinking and allows for more comprehensive understandings. In her view, decolonial feminism’s most important contribution to Psychology is the diversification of methodologies, which challenge binaries and allow for relational qualitative thinking. Methodologies such as kindred narrative inquiry, developed by Savaş when working with interpreters and immigrant communities, allow for feminist or decolonial interpretations and challenge these binaries. To Savas, a “feminist decolonial lens provides a way of thinking about power dynamics which impact(s) how we see ourselves and others”; she considers decolonial feminism as a “methodological way” of seeing things, which has been crucial in her research on forced migration and refugee resettlement.
Since she was a graduate student, Savaş has been involved with the Global Feminisms Project, “an oral history interviews archive with individuals who identify themselves as working on behalf of issues related to women and gender in different national contexts.” She has worked to expand the archive to include feminists from Türkiye, as well as feminisms from all other parts of the world. In addition to creating lesson plans for the archive and using the archive in her teaching, which features feminist decolonial psychological perspectives, she has emphasized the alienation of voices from the Global South as one of the current challenges in the field of Psychology (where even in spaces that foster qualitative inquiry, conversations still centre voices from the Global North), centering decolonial and intersectional work in the field.
As a scholar facing the unique challenges of living far from home, Savaş emphasizes the importance of a strong support system, including “friends and collaborators who have become family and the communities she has collaborated with,”. In her view, “how you’ve been mentored affects how you mentor.” She is grateful for the feminist scholars who have mentored her directly, such as Abigail Stewart, Kay Deaux and Sara McClelland, as well as the “vicarious” mentorship she received from her mentors’ own mentors. Savaş encourages students to persist on ideas they are passionate about, even if others tell you they are not worthy, and emphasizes the importance of self-reflexivity as a “people’s strongest weapon.” Despite the challenges faced by early career academics, such as a precarious job market and having to move around, difficulties maintaining links and involvement with communities, her advice to young academics is: don’t get frustrated—your connections will help you and you’ll find your place and rebuild again and again.
By Maria Jose Pernas Rodriguez (2025)
To cite this article, see Credits
Selected Works
Savaş, Ö., Duncan, L., Smith, H., & Stewart, A.J. (2024) The baggage and the benefits that travel with the F Word: Transnational feminism and its discontents. Analysis of Social Issues and Public Policy,1(31), https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12404
Savaş, Ö., * & Dutt, A.* (2023) Decolonial and intersectional feminist psychology for the future of (forced) migration and refugee resettlement. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2023.100124
Savaş, Ö.* Klein, V., * & Conley, T. (2023) Epistemic exclusion and invisibility in sex research: Revisiting the WEIRD dichotomy. The Journal of Sex Research, 1–4. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2023.2208091
Savaş, Ö., Caulfield, S., Smith, H.**, House, M.**, & Stewart, A. J. (2022) Vulnerability and empowerment on the ground: Activist perspectives from the Global Feminisms Project. Feminism & Psychology, 1-18. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535221139135
Klein, V., * Savaş, Ö., * Conley, T., (2022) How WEIRD and androcentric is sex research? Global Inequities in Study Populations. The Journal of Sex Research, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2021.1918050
Savaş, Ö., Greenwood, R. M., Blankenship, B. T., Stewart, A. J., & Deaux, K. (2021) All immigrants are not alike: Intersectionality matters in views of immigrant groups. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 9(1), 86-104. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.5...
Blankenship, B. T., Davis, T., Areguin, M. A., Savaş, Ö., Winter, D. & Stewart, A. J. (2021). Trust and tribulation: Racial identity centrality, institutional trust, and support for candidates in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. Analysis of Social Issues and Public Policy. http://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12256.
Savaş, Ö. & Stewart, A. J. (2019) Alternative pathways to activism: Intersections of social and personal pasts in the narratives of women’s rights activists. Qualitative Psychology, 6(1), 27-46. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.5575