Short Biography

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Dr. Oya Dursun-Özkanca (University of Texas at Austin, Ph.D.) is the Endowed Chair of International Studies and Professor of Political Science at Elizabethtown College, USA. In Fall 2021, she served as a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, working on her next book manuscript on the Eastern Mediterranean regional balance of power.  Her research interests include Turkish foreign policy, transatlantic security, European Union, Eastern Mediterranean, South East Europe, and peace operations. She is the author of two new booksTurkey–West Relations: The Politics of Intra-alliance Opposition, published by Cambridge University Press in November 2019 and The Nexus Between Security Sector Reform/Governance and Sustainable Development Goal-16: An Examination of Conceptual Linkages and Policy Recommendationspublished as part of the SSR Papers flagship series of the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF) by Ubiquity Press in May 2021. The Turkish translation of her Turkey-West Relations book, TürkiyeBatı İlişkileri: İttifak İçi Muhalefet Siyaseti (2023), is just out by Koç University Press in Turkey. She is also the editor of two books – The European Union as an Actor in Security Sector Reform (Routledge, 2014) and External Interventions in Civil Wars (co-edited with Stefan Wolff, Routledge, 2014) as well as a number of scholarly articles in leading peer-reviewed journals, such as Turkish Politics, Foreign Policy AnalysisCivil WarsEuropean SecurityJournal of Intervention and StatebuildingFrench PoliticsPerspectives on European Politics and Society, and Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. She served as a Visiting Fellow of Research on South Eastern Europe (LSEE) at London School of Economics (LSE) in 2013, and received grants and fellowships from Georgetown University, the London School of Economics, the European Commission (multiple grants), the American Political Science Association (APSA), the University of Texas at Austin (multiple fellowships), Deutscher Academischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), the European Union Studies Association, and the Mellon Foundation (multiple grants), the Elizabethtown College (multiple grants). She is the inaugural recipient of the Kreider Prize for Teaching Excellence at Elizabethtown College (2015), and the recipient of the Richard Crocker Outstanding Service to Students Award (2018, 2020), and the recipient of the Ranck Prize for Research Excellence at Elizabethtown College (2022).