Biography

Dilek Kurban is a Max Weber post-doctoral fellow at the European University Institute and an Adjunct Faculty at the Hertie School. She obtained her PhD from Maastricht University Faculty of Law in 2018. She also holds a Juris Doctor (JD) from Columbia Law School and a Master in International Affairs (MIA) from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Her PhD dissertation received the Erasmus Dissertation Prize 2019 in the Netherlands and was published as a monograph under the title Limits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict (CUP, 2020). The book has been awarded a Special Mention by the 2021 International Society of Public Law (ICON.S) Book Prize Committee. Kurban’s research interests are regional human rights courts, state violence, legal mobilization and judicial politics, with a thematic focus on authoritarian regimes. Her research has been published in edited volumes and in peer-reviewed journals, including Human Rights Law Review and Columbia Human Rights Law Review. Her research received funding from Columbia University, the European Commission (the Marie Curie and FP programs) and Mercator Stiftung. During 2012-2019, she was a member of the Network of Independent Experts in the Non-Discrimination Field of the European Commission. Before transitioning to academia, during 2005-2013, she engaged in policy-oriented research at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), most recently as the Director of its Democratization Program. During the same period, she wrote regular columns in Turkey’s leading newspapers and frequently appeared on international media to discuss her research and to comment on human rights and democratization in Turkey. Earlier in her career, Kurban worked as an Associate Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations Department of Political Affairs in New York.