With the “Hear, Here” series, we aim to facilitate conversations around new research in the humanities. Faculty fellows at the Institute for the Humanities will discuss a part of their current project in a short talk followed by a Q & A session.

About this talk:
This talk examines the rise, circulation, and impact of data technologies used to monitor reproductive behaviors in contemporary Turkey. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, I show how care and control intertwine in public health through what I call surveillance paternalism. Rather than treating this surveillance as an all-encompassing power, I argue that it operates not by what is monitored but by what is omitted and rendered invisible in databases, including labor precarity, domestic abuse, and state violence. Tracing the social life of data technologies and people’s responses to them, the talk raises broader questions about the relationship between health data and reproductive justice.

Seda Saluk is a 2026-27 Hunting Family Faculty Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities and Assistant Professor, Women's and Gender Studies.

image credit: "Fatıma'nın Eli" (Fatma's Hand) by Zehra Doğan,11.2018, Diyarbakır Prison. Photo: Jef Rabillon