I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bogazici University. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. Prior to attending UPenn, I completed a B.A. in Political Science & International Relations at Galatasaray University, a M.A. in European Political and Administrative Studies at the College of Europe, and another M.A. in Political Science at Sabancı University.
My research interests include regimes, contentious politics, collective action dynamics, and financial crises. Methodologically, I specialize in network analysis, agent-based modeling, qualitative research, and historical analysis. I am particularly interested in adaptations of complexity theory and dynamical systems to the study of social phenomena. My work has been published in Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Contemporary European Studies, and Journal of Contemporary European Studies. My co-authored chapter, When Does Repression Trigger Mass Protest? The 2013 Gezi Protests, was acknowledged by Cornell University with the 2015 Sidney Tarrow Best Article Prize for a paper written by a graduate student in the field of contentious politics or in European politics, sociology or history.
Currently, I am working on a number of solo and co-authored projects. My most recent solo-authored project, Tolerable levels of disagreement: Dynamics of coalition formation, currently under review, expands upon my dissertation research. This paper develops a theory of tolerable disagreement and proposes four possible coalition types with respect to the level and type of unresolved conflicts among opposition groups.
When not an academic, I do portraits and figurative drawing using pencil, charcoal, and ink. My other passions include mathematics and philosophy. To me, mathematics is simply beautiful!
Basak Taraktas 