Key details
Dr Ceylan Begüm Yıldız
Lecturer in Law
Ceylan is a critical legal scholar. Her research area is legal theory, and her research sits at the intersection of law, criminology, politics, philosophy, and sociology. In her research, Ceylan focuses on state violence, legal violence, acts of disobedience, protests, public demands and legal processes of accountability, performativity, and subjectivity. Her monograph State Violence and Legal Accountability: The Wait for Justice, published in 2025 by Routledge, explores the mythical formation of the state, the ghostliness of its violence, and the impact of stately myths, fantasies, and ghosts on public demands and legal processes of accountability. She holds a PhD from Birkbeck College. Before joining Greenwich, she taught at the University of Westminster, the University of Sussex, King’s College London, and Birkbeck College.
Responsibilities within the university
- Lecturer in Law
- Client Interviewing Programme Coordinator
Recognition
Ceylan is an active member of the national and international critical legal scholarship.
Socio-Legal Studies Association, member
The Legal Humanities Association (LHA), Governance committee member
Nomos: Centre for International Research on Law, Culture and Power, member
Associate Fellowship HEA
Research / Scholarly interests
- State violence, police violence
- Legal violence and legal accountability processes
- Public demands of accountability, disobedience, protests and counter-violence
- Legal and political performativity
- Ghosts, myths, fantasies and fetishes of political and legal power
- Feminist and critical race theories of law
Recent publications
Book
2027. Richards, S., Yıldız, C.B.& Costa do Valle, L.A., Law and Power. Routledge. (under contract)
2025. State Violence and Legal Accountability: The Wait for Justice. Routledge.
Book chapters
2025. ‘From Anomie to Antigone: a retrospective on the right to resistance in Costas Douzinas’ work. Wall, I, R. & Alvarez Nakagawa, A. J. (Eds). Rights, Resistance, Critique: The Critical Theory of Costas Douzinas. Routledge. (in press)
2020. ‘A State in Anomie: An Analysis of Modern Turkey’s States of Exception’. Cercel, C.S., Fusco, G. & Lavis, S. (Eds) States of Exception: Law, History, Theory. Routledge. 167-183.
Articles
2018. ‘Diyarbakır’s Objects of Memory: “Restoration” of the Kurdish City into a Biblokent’. London Journal of Critical Thought 2 (1): 50-61.
Other
2020. ‘Eine Reflexion über die außergewöhnliche politisch-rechtsstaatliche Kultur der Türkei’ Trans. Christine Schweitzer. Friedens Forum 6: 36- 37.
Presentations
2025 ‘State Violence and Legal Accountability’, Conversations about Justice, University of Greenwich.
2024 ‘Justice to Come: Derrida, Police Violence and Legal Accountability’, Derrida Symposium, Birkbeck College.
2023 ‘The Legal Aftermath of Police Violence’, Sanctuaries, Critical Legal Conference, Durham.
2022 ‘Awaiting Justice: State Violence on Trial’, Liminalities, Critical Legal Conference, Norway.
2022 ‘Awaiting Justice: The legal afterlife of police violence’, Law, Authoritarianism, Revolution: Critical Legal Theory for Troubled Times, Nomos Inaugural Conference, Poland.
2021 ‘Writing against the ghostly state’ University of Kent Centre for Critical Thought, Canterbury/Online.
2021 ‘Deadly Fate: State violence and its unaccountability’ Working with Benjamin on Law Workshop, Berlin/Online.
2019 ‘The (im)possibility of holding the state to account’ Birkbeck School of Law Cumberland Lodge Weekend, Egham.
2017 ‘Turkey’s Leading State of Emergency: round-the-clock curfews’ Critical Legal Conference, University of Warwick.