Dr. Seren Selvin Korkmaz

Seren Selvin Korkmaz is a political scientist, executive, and policy advisor. Her work focuses on voter behavior and electoral strategies, and she frequently provides political commentary in both national and international media. She is a co-founder and the director of IstanPol, an Istanbul-based think tank, where she served as Executive Director from 2018 to 2023. She is currently a Mercator-IPC Fellow at Sabancı University’s Istanbul Policy Center.

In 2023, Korkmaz was selected as a Marshall Memorial Fellow by the German Marshall Fund (GMF). She has also worked as a Türkiye Analyst at the Washington-based Middle East Institute and as a Researcher at the Swedish Research Institute. She previously served as a policy advisor at the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul. Through the Fox International Fellowship, she conducted research at Yale University and received training in leadership and policy development. In 2024, she was selected for the Türkiye Europe Future Forum, a joint initiative of TÜSİAD and the Mercator Foundation. She provides policy consultancy to national and international institutions and stakeholders.

Between 2018 and 2023, Korkmaz taught courses on Turkish and Middle Eastern politics at Stockholm University and conducted research at the university’s Institute for Turkish Studies. She completed her PhD at Stockholm University and holds both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Political Science and International Relations from Boğaziçi University. Her areas of expertise include populism, political parties, voter perception, electoral strategies, youth policies, and Türkiye-U.S. relations.

She has authored numerous analyses, policy briefs, and academic articles on her areas of study. Her commentary is frequently featured in national and international outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Deutsche Welle, The Wall Street Journal, and Habertürk. She has been invited to speak by a wide range of institutions and events including Stanford University, leading European think tanks such as ISPI (Italy) and IFRI (France), TÜSİAD, the Washington Institute, the Delphi Economic Forum, and Brandweek.