Didem Seyis

Biography

Didem Seyis is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Binghamton University (SUNY). Her research focuses on democratic backsliding, populism, political parties and elections in Europe and Latin America. She is part of various research projects that concentrate on the causes of third wave of autocratization as well as the causes of populist parties’ electoral success. She is also a lab member of the COVID-19 Protective Policy Index (PPI) Project under the supervision of Olga Shvetsova at Binghamton University. In order to shed more light on democratic backsliding and the rise of populism in unconsolidated democracies, she built a unique dataset on presidential and congressional elections in Latin America from 1990-2017. She has published in journals such as Political Studies, Electoral Studies and Turkish Studies. She teaches courses on comparative politics, regime change, populism and nationalism.

Prior to coming to Binghamton University, she graduated summa cum laude from Bogazici University with a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations. During her undergraduate studies, she spent a semester at Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. She received her M.A. degree from the Department of International Relations at Koc University with a thesis on the recent changes in elementary school curricula in Turkey. She is among the co-leaders of OPUS Young Scholars Initiative on Populism, and co-founders of Istanbul Political Research Institute (IstanPol). She was also the editorial assistant of the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties.