Seda Gürkan is Senior Assistant Professor of International Relations and European Studies at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, Leiden University, The Hague campus, Netherlands. She is also a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges campus and Affiliated Fellow and Professor at the Department of Political Science and the Institute for European Studies (IEE), at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium.

Seda is a graduate of the London School of Economics (LSE), Université libre de Bruxelles and Diplomatic School of Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She was previously a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington DC and a Visiting Fellow at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). Prior to joining academia, she practised international diplomacy for ten years as an international civil servant at NATO Headquarters in Brussels at the cabinet of Assistant Secretary General. At NATO, she was in charge of NATO-EU relations, counter-terrorism, missile defence and defence aspects of NATO’s operations. 

Her teaching and research interests include EU foreign policy (with a focus on the autocratization processes in the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood, enlargement policy, EU-Turkey relations), European security and defence, EU institutions, parliamentary diplomacy (European Parliament), and emotions in international relations.

Dr. Gürkan regularly provides expert opinions to the European Parliament on the EU’s enlargement policy, human rights and the EU’s neighbourhood. She lectures and gives trainings to civil servants, diplomats, journalists and Eurocrats on international relations and EU studies. She is a member of the Steering Committee of Leiden University’s interdisciplinary Europe Hub and team member of Una Europa Doctoral Interdisciplinary Methods Training (DIMT) programme. She is the PhD Dean at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, Leiden University. Dr. Gürkan is also an Advisory Board Member of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Programme at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) (2023-2026) and member of Scientific Council of several international research projects. She currently leads a Starter Grant on the role of emotions in EU foreign policy (EUMOTIONS) at Leiden University (2024-2029), and she is also involved in two Horizon Europe projects, both focused on examining the impact of autocratisation processes in the EU’s neighbouring countries on the EU’s foreign policy instruments.