About Me

I am currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Viral Lab in Sabanci University. I conduct my research in the field of International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE). During my doctoral studies, I taught IPE at Sabanci University and worked as a teaching assistant for the Law and Ethics course. As well as my academic career, I have worked as a researcher and consultant in a number of global and local think tanks.

My primary area of expertise lies in the political economy of non-traditional donors, specifically China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. I analyze and contrast their foreign aid practices with those of the OECD donors. I employ qualitative and quantitative tools to model donor competition with a particular emphasis on the ACPs, Sahel and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In the qualitative part, I focus on Somalia/Somaliland, Sudan and Egypt as case studies to demonstrate spillovers of power struggle on donor behavior. In addition to international relations, my research agenda also includes the association between violence and political party vote shares in societies susceptible to conflict.

I have an expertise in STATA, and a number of Python libraries to perform necessary qualitative or quantitative research operations. My research combines mainstream International Relations with computational tools.

I received my M.A. degree in Philosophy Department/Boğaziçi University, focusing on the social justice theory of F.A.Hayek. I have a B.A. degree from Philosophy Department/Bogazici University.