PROFILE Onur Kiliç wants to challenge the foundations of how we think about artificial intelligence. By introducing queer and decolonial perspectives, he questions the binary structures that are often taken for granted in technology. What happens if we reverse the perspective; if queer resistance not only is affected by technology, but can also begin to reshape it?
Onur Kiliç describes how he is particularly interested in the moments when the digital and physical worlds meet, intertwine, and therefore transform our understanding of society’s relationship with new technology:
"In my current project at Humlab, I work practically with motion capture technology, but I also reflect on how larger AI systems can, or risk, reinforcing binary gender norms."
He earned his PhD in Gender Studies at Lund University with the dissertation “Lubunya Assemblages: Queer Networked Resistances in Turkey,” where he conducted a multi-sited ethnography of Turkey’s Lubunya movement.*
Since March 2025, Onur Kiliç has been part of the interdisciplinary research project "E-motion: Binary Systems and Fluid Identities" at Humlab with a focus on challenging binary structures on AI systems such as Motion Capture (MoCap) technology from queer theory perspective.
"When I was working on my doctoral thesis, artificial intelligence emerged as a significant force. AI has changed how we interact with digital technology, where algorithmic systems seem to categorize and label users' bodies according to fixed identity categories."
In this labyrinth of big data, often driven by capitalist profitability, Onur is particularly interested in understanding how such categorization reinforces binary assumptions.
Onur continues by explaining how this focus developed over the years:
"In recent years, I have been following inspiring works from queer activists and designers working with AI both in producing speculative art and queer political imaginations. I find such practices of world-making very interesting part of queer resistance. My postdoc is motivated by these instances of resistance and possibly understanding their impacts on social justice."
Onur Kiliç argues that authoritarian repression today contributes to a sense of being stuck in the present – whether in research or in society at large. This creates a passivity that makes it difficult to imagine alternative futures. Within queer theory, scholars such as José Esteban Muñoz have inspired Onur. Muñoz, for example, had shown how queer knowledge traditions can draw on a certain utopian vision, where queer theory is seen as something embedded in the future.
"When I reflected on this, I felt a desire to delve deeper into and learn from the Lubunya movement’s resistance in Turkey. It’s a struggle that unfolds here and now, but is also deeply rooted in a long history, and imagines queer futures despite the feeling of oppression that never seems to end."
Finally, Onur Kiliç expresses hope that his research can contribute to collective queer thinking. This means re-examining the relationship between binarity and technology in a time marked by recurring, and often justified, pessimism.
A situated term in Turkey based on queer slang Lubunca. While originally referred mainly to trans women and feminine gay men; today it is widely used by Turkey's queer movement for sexually diverse and gender-variant people.
