Seda Gürkan is Senior Assistant Professor of International Relations and European Studies at Leiden University’s Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA). She is also a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges campus.

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Seda Gürkan is Senior Assistant Professor of International Relations and European Studies at Leiden University’s Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA). She is also a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges campus.

Dr. Gürkan holds a PhD degree from Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), a Master degree from the London School of Economics (LSE), and she is the graduate of Diplomatic School of Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She was previously a lecturer at Université libre de Bruxelles (2015-2022), 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. Dr. Gürkan regularly provides expert opinions to the European Parliament on the EU’s enlargement, 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 co-lead of Una Europa Doctoral Interdisciplinary Methods Training (DIMT) programme. She is the PhD Dean at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, Leiden University (since 2024). Dr. Gürkan is also a Scientific Council Member of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) in Brussels and an advisory member of the scientific councils of several international research projects.

Teaching and research interests

Her teaching and research interests include EU foreign policy (with a focus on the autocratization processes in the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood, enlargement, EU-Turkey relations), European security and diplomacy, the crises the EU has been facing since 2009, EU institutions, European integration theories, parliamentary diplomacy (European Parliament), emotions in international relations, and methodology in political science.

She recently co-edited a Special Issue for the Journal of European Integration on 'Emotions in EU Foreign Policy' (2024) and co-edited the book 'Theorising the crisis of the European Union' (Routledge, 2021).

She currently leads a Starter Grant on the role of emotions in EU foreign policy (EUMOTIONS), and she is currently involved in two Horizon Europe projects (2022-2026), both dealing with the impact of the processes of autocratisation in the EU’s neighbouring countries on the EU’s foreign policy instruments:

• Horizon-MSCA ‘Globalisation, Europe and Multilateralism: Democratic institutions, the rise of alternative models and mounting normative dissensus’ (GEM-DIAMOND);
• Horizon RIA project ‘Respond to Emerging Dissensus: Supranational Instruments and Norms of European democracy’ (RED-SPINEL).

Activities