Seren Selvin Korkmaz is co-founder and co-director of the IstanPol Institute and served as the founding executive director until November 2023. She was a political specialist at the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul from November 2023 to June 2024, advising on Turkish political dynamics. Korkmaz is a researcher at Stockholm University’s Institute for Turkish Studies and completed her Ph.D. dissertation at Stockholm University, where she also teaches. She was a 2023 Marshall Memorial Fellow of the German Marshall Fund. Her past roles include non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C., Fox International Fellow at Yale University, and research fellow at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul. She co-founded and served as Turkey director of the Political and Social Research Institute of Europe (PS:EUROPE). Her research interests include populism, political parties, voter perception, election strategies, opposition in autocratic regimes, transatlantic relations, and Turkey-U.S. relations. Korkmaz is a frequent political commentator in Turkish and international media outlets.