I am a sociologist who uses quantitative and computational methods to study intergroup relations, immigration, culture, and politics. In my research, I examine how group boundaries are drawn, contested, and politicized across different settings. Within this context, I have developed two complementary research agendas: (1) the cross-national study of intergroup relations and anti-immigrant attitudes, and (2) the study of how nationalism and ideology shape political attitudes and elite rhetoric.
My recent article in Social Forces, Religious Rebound, Political Backlash, and the Youngest Cohort: Understanding Religious Change in Turkey, received the 2025 Distinguished Article Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR). It also earned the 2025 Lombra Outstanding Graduate Research Award from Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts, recognizing it as the best social science article published by a graduate student at the Pennsylvania State University.
I hold an M.A. in Sociology from Penn State, where my master’s thesis on the attitudes of majority and minority group members toward immigrants received the 2024 Huber-Form Award. Before my time at Penn State, I earned an M.A. from the University of Mannheim as a DAAD–TEV scholarship holder, and I completed my B.A. in Sociology at Boğaziçi University.
My research has been published in Social Forces, Socius, Social Science Quarterly, Current Sociology, and the International Journal of Comparative Sociology, and featured in several media outlets. Feel free to explore my CV and publications for more details about my research.