Sevgi Adak
Sevgi Adak is Associate Professor and Head of Research at the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC). She completed her PhD at the School of Middle Eastern Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands and holds graduate degrees from Sabancı University (ZAMA in History), York University (MA in Political Science), and Central European University (MPhil in Political Science). Prior to joining AKU-ISMC in 2016 as full-time faculty, she taught at Sabancı University and Istanbul Bahçeşehir University and was a research fellow at the International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam.
Specializing in politics of secularism, women’s history, social history of modern Turkey, and Turkish politics, Adak published numerous articles and book chapters on the history of women’s activism in Turkey, aspects of secularism and Islamisation in contemporary Turkey, and the dynamics of state-society relations in the early Turkish republic. She is the author of Anti-Veiling Campaigns in Turkey: State, Society and Gender in the Early Republic (I.B. Tauris, 2022), and co-editor of Tek Parti Dönemini Yeniden Düşünmek: Devlet, Toplum, Siyaset (Tarih Vakfı, 2022). She is co-editing In Translation: Contemporary Thought in Muslim Contexts book series of the Edinburgh University Press and is on the editorial board of Contemporary Turkey joint book series of the British Institute at Ankara and I.B. Tauris, and Tarih ve Toplum Yeni Yaklaşımlar, an academic journal published in Turkish. Her latest book is a co-edited volume entitled The Enduring Legacy of Habsburg Islam Policy: Muslim Communities in Central and Southeast Europe (Edinburgh University Press, 2025).
Research Interests
Politics and religion; secularism; Islamisation
Authoritarian regimes; neoconservatism; politics of the family
Women’s history; history of feminism; women’s activism
Social history of modern Turkey
Turkish politics
Selected Publications
- Adak, S., & Schimidinger, T. (Eds.). (2025). The Enduring Legacy of Habsburg Islam Policy: Muslim Communities in Central and Southeast Europe. Edinburg University Press.
- Adak, S. (2022). Anti-Veiling Campaigns in Turkey: State, Society and Gender in the Early Republic. I.B. Tauris.
- Adak, S., & Lamprou, A. (Eds.). (2022). Tek Parti Dönemini Yeniden Düşünmek: Devlet, Toplum, Siyaset. Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları.
- Adak, S., & Çağatay, S. (2023). Revisiting Feminist Historiography on Women’s Activism in Turkey: Beyond the Grand Narrative of the Waves. Women’s History Review, 32(5), 723–44.
- Adak, S. (2023). Grassroots Familialism? NGO Mobilisation, Local Networks and New Conservatism in AKP Turkey. European Journal of Turkish Studies [Online], 33.
- Adak, S. (2023). The Left in Turkey: Survival and Resistance under Authoritarianism. MENA Politics: Newsletter of the Middle East and North Africa Politics Section of American Political Science Association, 6(2), 83–6.
- Adak, S. (2021). Expansion of the Diyanet and the Politics of Family in Turkey under AKP Rule. Turkish Studies, 22(2), 200–21.
- Adak, S. (2023). A Forgotten Wave: Socialist Women’s Activism and the Struggle for Gender Equality in 1970s Turkey. In A. Yenen & E. J. Zurcher (Eds.), A Hundred Years of Republican Turkey: A History in A Hundred Fragments. Leiden University Press.
Personal Links:
Sevgi Adak
Contact:
sevgi.adak@aku.edu
