Hande Coşkan Öztürk was born in December 1986 in Ortaköy, Istanbul. She graduated from F.M.V. Private Ayazağa Işık High School and completed her bachelor’s degree in Sociology at Galatasaray University. During her Erasmus exchange at Roma Tre University, she studied cinematography and documentary filmmaking, which laid the foundation for her interdisciplinary interest in visual culture, storytelling, and knowledge production.
Her media career began early, with an internship under Mehmet Ali Birand on the legendary political program 32. Gün. She went on to work with various media and cultural institutions, including Habertürk, Medina Turgul DDB Advertising Agency, the Lost Songs of Anatolia project, the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, the Akbank Short Film Festival, and the IFSAK Photography Biennial.
From 2011 to 2015, during the 24th Legislative Term of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, she served as the media and press advisor to Istanbul MP Melda Onur. Between 2015 and 2017, she pursued her master’s degree through the Erasmus Mundus program Crossways in Cultural Narratives, studying at the University of Sheffield, the University of Perpignan Via Domitia, and the University of Bergamo, where she completed her thesis.
She has delivered presentations on social movements and visual sociology at the University of Vienna and the University of Bucharest under the International Sociological Association. In 2018, she worked as a Communication Assistant for the UNDP Syria Programme.
From 2019 until April 2024, she served as a Digital Production Coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. She has recently transitioned to creative and academic work, focusing on her long-term artistic and intellectual interests. She is currently a practice-based PhD researcher at Edinburgh Napier University, where her project, The Social History of Seeing, explores visual epistemology, maritime knowledge networks, and the evolution of perception.
She is the mother of a daughter, Mayıs Kayra.
My works of Art: https://vimeo.com/handecoskan