Jacob Zenn is a Legal Advisor for The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL). Prior to joining ICNL in 2011, Jacob worked as a research assistant at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington DC.
Zenn received his JD degree from Georgetown University Law Center where he was a Global Law Scholar and recipient of the Certificate in Refugee Law and Humanitarian Emergencies. He was an intern at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Malaysia and at the National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms (HOOD) in Yemen. He was the recipient of the Arthur C. Helton Fellowship from the American Society of International Law and the Chadbourne & Parke LLP Middle East and North Africa Fellowship. Jacob received his B.A. from Emory University. He received a graduate degree in international affairs from the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Nanjing, China.
Zenn’s publications on international security were published by the Jamestown Foundation, West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, the Asia Times, Hurriyet and the Yemen Times. He is also a member of the Department of State’s “Young Turkey/Young America: An New Relationship for a New Age” initiative.
Ismail Yaylaci is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He received his Master's degree in Political Science and International Relations from Bogazici University, Turkey. His current research deals with the discourses on the transformation of Islamism in world politics. His areas of research include international relations theory, international norms and institutions, Islam and politics, and Islamism with a particular focus on Turkey and Egypt.
Brian Mello is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Muhlenberg College. He earned his Ph.D. in 2006 at the University of Washington, Seattle. His areas of study include comparative politics, international relations, and the politics of social movements, with a regional specialization in the Middle East, and a particular focus on Turkey. His current research focuses on comparative labor politics, and in particular, on the political importance of the labor movement in Turkey. He conducted field research in Turkey during the spring of 2004, which included surveys and interviews of union members, and guest edited a special issue of the European Journal of Turkish Studies (October 2010) on this topic. In addition, jointly with S. Mohsin Hashim, he has an on-going research project comparing civil-military relations and their effect on Islamic politics in both Turkey and Bangladesh. At the Muhlenberg College, Dr. Mello teaches courses in comparative politics and international relations, including courses on the interdisciplinary study of peace and conflict; Middle East politics; and government and politics in Europe.
Sarah Fischer’s research investigates the relationship between religion, democratization, and gender in Turkey. In addition to presenting research at conferences such as the American Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting, the World Congress on Middle Eastern Studies, and the Midwest Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting, she has won a Boren Fellowship, two Critical Language Scholarships, an ARIT-AATT Turkish Language Scholarship, and numerous other scholarships and fellowships. Ms. Fischer received her undergraduate degrees from Iowa State University. Currently a Ph.D. candidate at American University in Washington, D.C., Ms. Fischer has also studied at Koç University and Boaziçi University in Istanbul.
Guliz Belcher is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her areas of interest include politics of religion, political parties, elections and democratization. She received her B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from Marmara University, Istanbul Turkey.
Kutbettin Kilic is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University-Bloomington. His areas of interest are: Civil wars, Nationalism and Ethnicity, Turkish politics, and Turkish foreign policy. More specifically, he is focused on the relationship between ethnic identity and political behavior in conflict environments.
Joakim Parslow holds a BA and an MA from the University of Oslo and is currently a PhD candidate in the University of Washington’s Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Near and Middle Eastern Studies. His dissertation investigates the role of courts as mediators and objects of state-society relations in Turkey and Egypt, with a particular eye to the politics of “exceptional” jurisdictions such as state security courts and military judiciaries.
Serdar Poyraz has published on the history of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire and taught classes on Modern World History and the History of the Middle East at Ohio State University and Wake Forest University. He worked as a Graduate Research Associate at the Ohio State’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies. He received his B.A. in International Relations from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and his M.A. in Political Science from Ohio State University. He also studied at the Dekhoda Institute in Tehran, Iran. He is currently finishing his PhD studies in Middle Eastern History at Ohio State University. He will teach as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Montana in 2011.
Sener Aktürk is a post-doctoral fellow and a visiting lecturer at the Davis Center for Russian and Russian Studies at Harvard University and Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at Koc University, Istanbul. He received a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies, and an M.A. in International Relations, both from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. and PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.