I am Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College and Senior Fellow at the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

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    A second-generation immigrant, I grew up in upstate New York and Istanbul, Turkey. Prior to my academic career, I taught English at a public high school in Rennes, France, helped produce the Contemporary Istanbul Art and New Orleans Jazz and Heritage festivals, worked as a medical interpreter in New York City hospitals, and served as Resident Director of the U.S. State Department’s Critical Languages Scholarship Turkish Program in Istanbul and Izmir.

    I earned my B.A. in Political Science from Reed College in 2005 and my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. I have held faculty positions at Cornell University and at the University of Pennsylvania. I live in West Philadelphia.