Biography

Seda Unsar was a visiting fellow at the LSE before joining the Max Weber Programme. She obtained her Ph.D. in Political Science with distinction from the University of Southern California, and has a B.A. in International Relations from Koç University on a full Vehbi Koç Scholarship.
Seda Unsar’s research interests incorporate institutional theory and path dependence, politics of (un)development, discontents of globalization and democratization, ethnic and religious conflict (or rather ethnicized and religionized politics under neo-liberal ascendancy), secularism and political Islam.
Her research focuses on evolutionary patterns of institutional paths of civilizations and the contemporary manifestation of historical phenomena under the crossroads of globalization, redefinition of state and democracy, justice and identity, and the emergence of right-wing movements on neo-liberal terms.
In her book manusctipt, Seda Unsar focuses on the Ottoman story examining the impact of exogenously induced endogenous institutional change on the overall path of the polity by way of a critical application of path dependence theory.
In this context, the project seeks to provide a new perspective on institutional development (and institutionally challenged development), stability and change as well as to open up a new possibility for research to investigate linkages between past evolutionary trajectories and contemporary patterns.