Photo of Basak Taraktas

I am an Associate Professor of Political Science at Bogazici University, where I direct the Center for European Studies and the Computational Social Science Lab. I received my PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. Before joining Bogazici, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs and a senior analyst at FutureMap.

My research centers on collective action and opinion dynamics in regimes, social movements, and contentious politics. I combine computational methods (agent-based models, network analysis, and text analysis) with qualitative and historical research to study how ideology and beliefs shape cooperation. I am particularly interested in adapting complexity theory and dynamical systems to the social sciences.

My work has appeared in Social Networks, New Media & Society, Government and Opposition, Social Movement Studies, Scientific Reports, and PLOS ONE, among others. My co-authored chapter on the 2013 Gezi protests received the Sidney Tarrow Best Article Prize.

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