Dr Zeynep Kaya

Research Fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Dr Zeynep Kaya is a Fellow at the London School of Economics. She completed her PhD in International Relations at LSE on the interaction between international norms and ethnicist conceptions of territorial identity with a focus on the Kurdish case. She is currently working on her book titled The Idea of Kurdistan: International Norms and Nationalism for the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Dr Kaya is also leading the research project  ‘Investigating the Role of International Actors in Enhancing Women’s Rights after a Foreign Military Intervention: A Case Study of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq’, in collaboration with the American University in Dubai.

Research interests

• Nationalism and international norms, particularly self-determination
• Kurdish nationalism in the region and the diaspora
• International political theory
• Gender and state-building in the Kurdistan region of Iraq
• Contemporary Turkish politics