Biography
Asli Selin Okyay is a Research Associate at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (Global Governance Programme). Prior to joining the RSC, she was a Senior Fellow at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome (2017–2024), where she coordinated the Institute's migration-related activities within the framework of research projects funded by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 programme, as well as a variety of privately funded projects combining research, evidence-based policy advice, and stakeholder engagement. Previously, she was a postdoctoral Research Associate at the European University Institute, working on the ERC-funded Borderlands project (2015–2017). She obtained her PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute in 2015, her MPhil in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford in 2009, and her MA and BA in Political Science and International Relations from Boğaziçi University in 2007 and 2005 respectively.
Her research interests include migration dynamics across the Mediterranean, the interplay between the European Union’s migration and foreign policies, and the intersections between migration, border governance, cross-regional relations and interdependence dynamics linking the Mediterranean Middle East and Europe. She has published on these issues in various formats, including peer-reviewed journal articles, co-edited volumes, book contributions, research reports, policy briefs and commentaries.
In her current work within the Mediterranean and Middle East research area, she focuses particularly on the dynamics and structural features that underpin the emergence, rise, and expansion of political projects that promote a social and political order based on (gender) inequalities in the Middle East and across the Mediterranean.
She is fluent in English, Italian, Spanish, and Turkish.