Turkuler Isiksel

Turkuler Isiksel is Associate Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies at Columbia University. Her research in contemporary political theory focuses on the off-label uses of institutions such as constitutionalism, elections, and fundamental rights norms in illiberal or authoritarian contexts. She is the author of a 2016 book, Europe’s Functional Constitution. A Theory of Constitutionalism beyond the State, which critically evaluates the European Union’s legal development from a series of interstate agreements to a supranational constitutional system focused on market integration. In addition to her scholarship on European integration, she has written on constitutional theory, postnational citizenship, cosmopolitanism, and the rights of firms. Her scholarship has been published in the American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, I*CON, Human Rights Quarterly, and the European Journal of International Law. During the ’23-‘24 academic year, Isiksel served as the Neil MacCormick Fellow in Legal Theory at the NYU School of Law. She has also held visiting fellowships at the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, the Law and Political Affairs Program at Princeton, and the Normative Orders project at Goethe University in Frankfurt. She is a trustee of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for anthropological research and a past president of the European Youth Parliament. She holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Political Science from Yale University.