Mehmet Akif Kirecci

President at Economic Cooperation Organization Educational Insititute

Speaker

Mehmet Akif Kireçci received his PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, where he subsequently taught before joining the Stevens Institute of Technology as a faculty member. Between 2009 and 2019, he taught at Bilkent University before joining the Department of International Relations at the Social Sciences University of Ankara, where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences and continues to serve as faculty. Since 2017, he has been serving as the President of the ECO Educational Institute. He is also the Deputy Chair of the Turkish National Commission for UNESCO and a member of the Board of the Turkish Fulbright Commission. His research and publications focus on international relations, geopolitics, Turkish foreign policy, the Middle East and Central Asia, internationalisation of higher education, civilisation studies, Ottoman diplomacy, Orientalism, intellectual history, and the history of science and technology. He is the author and editor of numerous books and scholarly publications and is the recipient of the Janet Lee Stevens Award from the University of Pennsylvania and the Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant by the European Research Executive Agency.