Emel Akçalı is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Defence Studies Department, King's College London. She teaches and researches about environmental geopolitics, critical security and geopolitical studies, gender, state and society and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa, and global International Relations. Her research thus far has been funded by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), British Institute in Ankara, Central European University (CEU), the Višegrad Fund, Fondation de Robert Schuman in Paris and she has been awarded CEU Institute of Advanced Study and Aix-Marseille University Institute of Advanced Study resident fellowships for world class foreign researchers in 2013 and 2016. She is the author of Chypre: Un enjeu geopolitique actuel (Cyprus, a contemporary geopolitical stake) published by l’Harmattan in Paris, in 2009 and she has a forthcoming book on Turkey Going Green published by Edinburgh University Press. 

Research Interests:

• Environmental Geopolitics
• Green Energy Transition
• Critical Security Studies
• Critical Geopolitics
• Non-Western /Global IR
• Geopolitical Imaginations
• Post human IR 

Forthcoming and Recent Publications:

• BOOK: 2024 Going Green in Turkey: Environmental Geopolitics in the Southeastern Mediterranean, Edinburgh University Press.
• RESEARCH ARTICLE: 2023 “Turkey’s Green Imagination: The Hybrid Spatiality of Low Carbon Energy Transition within the EU Green Deal” Uluslararasi Iliskiler, with Evrim Görmüş and Soli Özel, https://doi.org/10.33458/uidergisi.1233968
• RESEARCH ARTICLE: 2022 “The Little Aleppo: the Neighbourhood experiences of Syrian refugees in Adana, Turkey, ‘poor to poor, peer to peer’”, Environmental & Planning C : Politics and Space https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23996544221125688
• RESEARCH ARTICLE: 2021 “Enjoy your new region: The US strategy of shifting Turkey’s Caucus in the UN Security Council in 1953”, Gepolitics, with Ali Balci https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14650045.2021.1969918
• RESEARCH ARTICLE: 2021 “Business People in War Times, the ‘Fluid Capital’ and the ‘Shy Diaspora’: The Case of Syrian Business People in Turkey” Journal of Refugee Studies, 34: 3 : 2891–2911 with Evrim Görmüş
• RESEARCH ARTICLE: 2021 “Variegated forms of embeddedness: Home-grown neoliberal- authoritarianism in Tunisia under Ben Ali” in Journal of International Relations and Development, 24: 408-429, with Evrim Görmüş
• RESEARCH ARTICLE: 2019 “Facebook: An emerging arena for politics of self-determination in Northern Cyprus?” South European Society and Politics, 24 (4): 513-533.
• RESEARCH ARTICLE: 2018 “Do popular assemblies contribute to genuine political change? Lessons from the park forums in Istanbul” South European Society and Politics, 23: 3: 323-340.
• POLICY PAPER: 2022 "Energy Transitions and Environmental Geopolitics in the Southern Mediterranean" https://www.iai.it/en/pubblicazioni/energy-transitions-and-environmental-geopolitics-southern-mediterranean?fbclid=IwAR2bZZBA6L5KpvGbgtAqBsfmesboUxL_71pLDvADGKAD5LBk6fckdIxh8U
• POLICY PAPER: 2022 “Towards a Green Mediterranean- Environmental Geopolitics- Turkey-Egypt and Israel” https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/blog/towards-green-mediterranean-environmental-geopolitics-turkey-egypt-and-israel

Teaching:

Emel welcomes PhD students looking to research in the broad area of international relations, critical geopolitics and critical security studies with a focus on the wider Mediterranean region, the Arctic and environmental politics.