Born in 1981, she graduated from Istanbul Fine Arts High School Music Department. After her undergraduate education at Yildiz Technical University, Faculty of Art and Design, Department of Music and Performing Arts, she graduated from YTU Art and Design Master's Programme with her thesis "Opera in the 20th Century, the Effects of 20th Century Modernism on Opera and Opera in the Context of Modernist/Postmodernist Aesthetics".

In 2009, she received her PhD from the same institution with her thesis "Women Composers in Turkey in the Context of Gender: From Tanzimat (1839) to Today". She started her postdoctoral research at the University of London SOAS. Dr. Z. Gulcin Ozkisi continued her postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford as a TUBITAK scholar and then at King's College London. She became an associate professor in 2017. She worked at YTU Faculty of Art and Design between 2005-2020.

Dr Z. Gulcin Ozkisi has published articles and book chapters on the issues of music and gender, performance and compositional practices of the 20th century and beyond. She has been living and working in London since 2020.