Sener Akturk - Şener Aktürk
Assistant Professor, Department of International Relations, Koc University, Istanbul
Ph.D., Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley (2009)
Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and
Lecturer in the Department of Government, Harvard University (2009-2010)
Recipient of 2010 Sakip Sabanci International Research Award (Third Place)
Recipient of 2011 Baki Komsuoğlu Social Sciences Encouragement Award
I am currently an Assistant Professor in the
Department of International Relations at the College of Administrative Sciences & Economics at Koc University, Istanbul. I
received a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies, and an
M.A. in International Relations, both from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. and Ph.D.
in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. I was a
visiting scholar at Europa Universitaet-Viadrina, in Frankfurt a.d. Oder,
Germany, in 2007, and was a visiting lecturer at Bogazici University, Istanbul,
in Summer 2008. I have published and forthcoming articles in international peer reviewed journals including World Politics, European Journal of Sociology, Middle Eastern Studies, Nationalities Papers, Ab Imperio, Theoria, Turkish Studies, Central Eurasian Studies Review, Insight Turkey, Journal of Academic Studies; national peer reviewed journals including Dogu Bati; other periodicals including ISEEES Newsletter, BPS Working Papers, JAGNES, Alternatives, Hemispheres, UC Davis Journal of International Affairs; book reviews in Comparative Political Studies, Europe-Asia Studies, Rethinking Marxism, and Cold War Studies; encyclopedia articles for the Encyclopedia of Governance, Encyclopedia of World Poverty, and Encyclopedia of World History; opinion pieces in major Turkish daily newspapers including Radikal, Star, Taraf, Yeni Safak, Zaman, and English daily newspapers including Today's Zaman, Sunday's Zaman, and Hurriyet Daily News; contributed book chapters to five edited books in English and Turkish; serve in the editorial board of The Washington Review of Turkish & Eurasian Affairs and the Journal of Global Analysis, and in the advisory board of Sociology of Islam and Muslim Societies and Alternative Politics. The topics I published on include ethnicity,
nationalism, supra-nationalism, intellectual history, and religious diversity in Germany, Soviet Union, the Russian Federation, Turkey, Austria, European Union,
Iran, and Central Asia. Ethnic groups that I wrote on, or reviewed books about,
include Soviet Germans, Jews, Crimean Tatars, and other Muslim ethnic groups in the
Soviet Union, Post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine; Kurds, Alevis, and Assyrians in the Middle East; immigrant and autochthon ethnic minorities in Germany
and Austria. I am the recipient of 2010 Sakip Sabanci International Research Award, administered by Sabanci University and the Brookings Institute, as well as Peter Odegard Award (2006), Outstanding
Graduate Student Instructor Award (2009), and Teaching
Effectiveness Award (2009), from the University
of California, Berkeley. I am a native
speaker of Turkish and proficient in German and Russian. My Dissertation: "Regimes of Ethnicity" My
dissertation is titled "Re-Defining Ethnicity and Belonging:
Persistence and Transformation in Regimes of Ethnicity in Germany,
Turkey, Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation." I examined the
challenges to change the ethnicity regime in these three countries
since the 1950s, and explained why the earlier challenges from the
1950s to the 1990s failed, until an episode of successful reform in the
late 1990s and early 2000s in these three countries. My dissertation used, among other sources; 60 interviews I conducted (in English, German, Russian, and Turkish) with politicians, bureaucrats, leaders of ethnic minority organizations, intellectuals, academics, and other actors engaged with the politics of ethnicity in Germany, Soviet Union, Russian Federation, and Turkey; parliamentary proceedings, official journals, autobiographies and memoirs, electoral data, and secondary sources. On this topic, I have coined the term "regimes of ethnicity" and defined the categories of "mono-ethnic, multi-ethnic, and non/anti-ethnic regimes", which you can learn more about by reading my articles: The Ethnic Category and Nationalism: Mono-Ethnic, Multi-Ethnic and Non-Ethnic Regimes (in Turkish, in Doğu Batı, No.38, 2006) and Continuity and Change in the Regimes of Ethnicity in Austria, Germany, the USSR/Russia, and Turkey: Varieties of Ethnic Regimes and Hypotheses for Change, in Nationalities Papers, Vol.35, No.1 (March 2007). I elaborated on this concept in various publications and public presentations that followed. Selected/highlighted publications: This otherwise simple page has a link to my CV, which in turn has my academic history and links to all my publications, among other things. Among my recent publications are Incompatible Visions of Supra-Nationalism: National Identity in Turkey and the European Union in European Journal of Sociology/Archives Europeennes de Sociologie, Vol.48, No.2 (August 2007), and Persistence of the Islamic Millet as an Ottoman Legacy: Mono-Religious and Anti-Ethnic Definition of Turkish Nationhood," Middle Eastern Studies, Volume 45, Issue 6 (November 2009). Download Curriculum Vitae (10/30/2009) |
