Professor Ayşe Zarakol

Ayşe (pronounced I–sheh), is one of our Official Fellows, teaching Politics. She is Professor of International Relations at the University's Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS).

Biography

Ayşe grew up in Istanbul, Turkey and studied in the USA for her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. Her BA degree was in Political Science and Classical Studies at Middlebury College in Vermont. She moved to the University of Wisconsin–Madison for postgraduate studies, where she received her MA and PhD in Political Science. She joined both the University of Cambridge and Emmanuel as an Official Fellow in 2013. In her time at Emmanuel she has held visiting positions in Oslo, Copenhagen, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Brisbane, Canberra, Taipei, Natolin/Warsaw and Washington, DC, and fellowships across Cambridge, Denmark and Norway. In 2023 she was awarded the 8th Rahmi M. Koç Medal of Science (and the first one in International Relations). This is given annually to one scholar of Turkish origin under 50 for outstanding global success and significant progress in their field. In 2024, Ayşe was elected a fellow of the British Academy and Academia Europea. She was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Copenhagen. 

Teaching

Ayşe teaches our students as part of the Human, Social and Political Sciences course. Her teaching interests are primarily in International Relations and approaches rooted in global historical sociology, focusing especially on the history and evolution of the modern states system and international order. 

Research

Her main research focus is East–West relations in the international system, problems of modernity and sovereignty, rising and declining powers, and IR theory. She has published multiple journal articles across international publications as well as being recognised and funded by a number of public and private institutions across the world. Her book After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West (CUP 2011), published in both English and Turkish, deals with international stigmatization and the integration of defeated eastern powers (Turkey after WWI, Japan after WWII and Russia after the Cold War) into the modern international order. Her latest book Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders (CUP 2022), advances a new history of (Eur)asian international relations and rethinks the concepts of order, sovereignty and decline. It has won six international book awards and is currently being translated into multiple languages.

She sits on a number of journal editorial boards and is an Associate Editor at International Organization (2022–7). She also was the editor of (and a contributor to) the award-winning Hierarchies in World Politics (CUP 2017), bringing together the best examples of IR scholarship on hierarchies. Since 2010, she has been a member of the PONARS Eurasia international academic network which advances new policy approaches to research and security in Russia and Eurasia. Currently Ayşe is overseeing an international research program on Global Disorder, funded by the British Academy.