​I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology at NYU Abu Dhabi. My research and teaching interests include political sociology, social movements, and social theory. I received my PhD in Sociology from University of California-Los Angeles in 2014, my BA and MA in Political Science from Bogazici University (Istanbul) in 2003 and 2005 respectively.

I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Turkey on religious mobilization, ethnic relations, and minority rights. My book Cultivating Souls and Society: Cultural Groundwork and the Rise of Islamist Politics in Turkey, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, investigates the Islamist movement's efforts to use official and unofficial religious education sites to implement a quiet, gradual, and remarkably robust project of sociopolitical Islamization in Turkey since the early twentieth century. My other research focuses on ethnic hierarchies and modes of citizenship in multicultural societies. 

My analytical tools range from multi-sited participant observation to longitudinal qualitative fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and archival research. Currently, I am completing an article about political repression in Turkey. 

My research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Council for European Studies, the American Council for Learned Societies, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

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