I am a political sociologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science Middle East Centre.

My work focuses on theorising the politics of populism, and the study of political identities, conflict, and polarization. Empirically, it has focused on Muslim communities and identities in Europe and transnational Muslim politics and networks, nationalism, populism and conflict in southeastern Europe, Cyprus and Turkey, authoritarianism and its contestation in Turkey and Iran, urban politics and contestation in Turkey and the MENA region. A related strand in my work involves the exploration of populist nationalism as one of the drivers of Turkey’s power projection regionally and internationally.

My publications include three monographs, one edited book, over 40 articles and book chapters and numerous shorter articles and op-eds. My most recent book, Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism develops a discursive approach bringing together discourse and action, uses and integrates modes of analysis from a diverse body of scholarship such as sociology, cultural and psychosocial studies, political science and theory into a genealogical narrative that stresses the role of societal, political, and corporeal memory in the construction of the ‘popular’. It elucidates the transformations of the people during one hundred years of republican politics and gauges the ramifications of the populist turn in Turkey’s political trajectories and situates Turkey’s experience with populism in broader populism literatures by showing its unique aspects as well as commonalities with other cases all around the world.

In 2019, I founded #RethinkingPopulism in collaboration with openDemocracy (until 2021) and as an independent platform supported by a consortium of universities (since 2022), and have been its lead editor.

A commentator with an energetic voice, I also frequently write about social and political issues for venues such as The Conversation, the LSE Blog, OpenDemocracy, Dialoguemos and Truthout.