Alev Coban
studied African Development Studies of Geography, Law in Africa and Human Geography in Bayreuth and Frankfurt. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Human Geography at Goethe University Frankfurt. Alev completed an advanced training in Design Thinking at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Potsdam. For her PhD, she was funded by the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung. Since June 2018, she works as a research assistant at the Department of Human Geography in Frankfurt. Her research interests include Feminist and Postcolonial STS, Affect Theory, Digital Work, Makerspaces, East Africa and Ethnography.
Publications
Coban, A. & Wenten, K.-A. (2021). Who Cares for Agile Work? In/Visibilized Work Practices and Their Emancipatory Potential. Nanoethics, 15, 57-70.
Coban, A. (2019). Calculative Making: The Fear of Failure in Kenya’s Makerspaces. Backchannels – Society of Social Studies of Science (4S).
Coban, A. (2018). Making Hardware in Nairobi: Between Revolutionary Practices and Restricting Imaginations. Journal of Peer Production 12.
Coban, A. (2018). Same, same but different: Storytelling of innovative places and practices in Nairobi. In: Engelschalt et al. (eds.) Schafft Wissen: Gemeinsames und geteiltes Wissen in Wissenschaft und Technik. Proceedings der 2. Tagung des Netzwerks „INSIST“; 07.-08. Oktober 2016, München.
Research
Postcolonial Bodies, Machines, and Affects – The Promises and Performances of Technology Development in Kenya, 2015 – ongoing.
Alev’s research looks at the working conditions in makerspaces and other places of hardware innovation in Kenya. Hereby, she is particularly interested in the interplay between international investment, the ubiquitous belief in progress through technological innovation and the actual everyday work in Nairobi. Her work examines what affective and socio-material practices are particularly demanded from places, bodies, and machines that are marked as technologically ‘catching-up’ and therefore as peripheral to global technology development. Alev argues that making technologies in Kenya entails collaborative and loving work between co-workers, machines, and material, but also strenuous efforts of positioning within workplace hierarchies, technocapitalism, and colonial legacies.