Welcome to my webpage!
I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Central European University Democracy Institute and a researcher at the Binghamton University (SUNY) Center on Democratic Performance. I hold a Ph.D. in Political Science from Binghamton University. My research focuses on democratic backsliding, populism, identity politics, and voting behavior in Latin America and Europe. I have two primary academic goals: to understand (and help others understand) why populists are increasingly more popular among voters globally and how populist governments undermine democratic checks and balances. I am part of various research projects that focus on these questions in the Americas and Europe, and I collected election data on 18 Latin American countries to help answer these questions. I have published in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature, Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, Frontiers in Political Science, and Turkish Studies.
Previously, I was a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University under the supervision of Dr. Lisel Hintz and a lab member of the COVID-19 Protective Policy Index (PPI) Project under the supervision of Olga Shvetsova at Binghamton University. I was also the editorial assistant of the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. Broadly speaking, I teach various of courses on regime change, populism and extremism, identity politics, and voting behavior. I am among the co-leaders of OPUS Young Scholars Initiative on Populism and co-founders of Istanbul Political Research Institute.
I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Central European University Democracy Institute and a researcher at the Binghamton University (SUNY) Center on Democratic Performance. I hold a Ph.D. in Political Science from Binghamton University. My research focuses on democratic backsliding, populism, identity politics, and voting behavior in Latin America and Europe. I have two primary academic goals: to understand (and help others understand) why populists are increasingly more popular among voters globally and how populist governments undermine democratic checks and balances. I am part of various research projects that focus on these questions in the Americas and Europe, and I collected election data on 18 Latin American countries to help answer these questions. I have published in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature, Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, Frontiers in Political Science, and Turkish Studies.
Previously, I was a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University under the supervision of Dr. Lisel Hintz and a lab member of the COVID-19 Protective Policy Index (PPI) Project under the supervision of Olga Shvetsova at Binghamton University. I was also the editorial assistant of the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. Broadly speaking, I teach various of courses on regime change, populism and extremism, identity politics, and voting behavior. I am among the co-leaders of OPUS Young Scholars Initiative on Populism and co-founders of Istanbul Political Research Institute.
* Istanbul, where the West and the East meet. Photo Credit: Melih Karaahmet.