PPOJECT COORDINATOR

Mehmet Ali Başak is the project coordinator and research assistant for the Nonreligious Beliefs and Practices in Türkiye (NBPT) research project. He is originally from Türkiye, where he completed his BA with honors at the Middle East Technical University. He then received a full scholarship from the Qatar Foundation to study for a master’s degree in Contemporary Muslim Societies and Thought at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. He chose to undertake a second MA degree in Religious Studies at the Memorial University of Newfoundland to enhance his academic background and research skills. His MA project at Memorial was titled “The Formation of Muslim Identities in Canadian Offline and Online Spaces” . Mehmet is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. Mehmet also works as a project research assistant and a member of the Student Caucus for the Nonreligion in a Complex Future (NCF) Project, led by Professor Lori Beaman from the University of Ottawa. 

His main research interest for his work at the University of Ottawa is in ”Becoming Nonreligious in a Contemporary Muslim Majority Context” with an emphasis on the “Religion to Nonreligion Transition Among Young Adults in Türkiye”.  His doctoral project aims to investigate the transformation from religious to nonreligious identities, practices and lifestyles in Muslim families of Turkey. Particularly, he focuses on the lifecourses of the adult children of religious families in a Muslim majority context of Türkiye.

Drawing upon one year-long fieldwork in Türkiye, Mehmet attempts to shed light on the transformation of religion in the everyday lives of Turkish people by focusing on nonreligious practices and beliefs within the newly emerging conceptual framework of nonreligion