Biography

Zeynep Alemdar is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM). She specializes in foreign policy, security studies, and inclusive peace processes. She has published extensively on Turkish foreign policy and regional geopolitics, mostly exploring the intersections of international security and domestic politics.Her academic research on Turkey-EU relations, and Turkish foreign policy, women in international security was published in leading journals, including Middle Eastern Studies, New Perspectives on Turkey, and International Relations. Her books are Turkey’s Challenges and Transformation: Politics and Society on the Centennial of the Republic (2023 Palgrave, co-edited with Harun Arıkan), and Turkish Civil Society and the EU: Domestic Politics Through International Organizations, (2008, Verlag Dr .Müller).  She has done research for international organizations including the EU, UN and the World Bank, and has published with leading policy institutions across the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.Prof. Alemdar was a Fellow at The New Institute (2024–25) in Hamburg, Germany, a Hurford Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in Washington D.C., visiting professor at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. In 2014, she was recognized among four Euro-Atlantic security leaders under 40. She spent 19 years at a foundation university in Istanbul, where she was the head of the department of International Relations (2005- 2020) and Dean of the Faculty of Business and Administrative Sciences (2020-2023).She holds a BA in Economics from Galatasaray University, an MA from the Patterson School of Diplomacy, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Kentucky.