Can Yalçınkaya is a Turkish-Australian higher education worker, researcher and multi-disciplinary artist living and working on the stolen lands of Wallumedegal people and the Darug Nation, whose sovereignty was never ceded.
He holds a PhD in Media (Macquarie University, 2013) and is a Senior Fellow of The Higher Education Academy. He works as an academic program manager at Macquarie University International College.
His key research areas are transnational media, diaspora studies, visual culture, comics and graphic novels, autoethnography and arts-based research. His articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections.
He is an active participant in the comics and zine communities of Turkey and Australia. He published several short comics in anthologies, magazines and on the web. Since 2017, Can has been developing a creative research practice in the form of “graphic scholarship” or “comics-based research”, using the multi-modal medium of comics to communicate research outcomes.
Can has been one of the volunteer organisers of Other Worlds, Sydney’s largest zine fair held annually at Marrickville Town Hall since 2014. He is also the head of the selection committee of the Comic Art Workshop, an artist run graphic narrative workshop based in Australia.
Can plays the drums and darbuka in Hazeen, an anti-racist, Muslim death metal band which he formed with his dear friend, fellow academic and artist Safdar Ahmed in 2015. The duo performed in such venues as an abandoned theme park, an anarchist bookstore, zine fairs, and art spaces like Shh Centre, Cement Fondu and the MCA.