Ceren Lord

Ceren Lord is a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) at the University of Oxford, affiliated with St Antony's College. Previously, she held a Sasakawa Peace Foundation Postdoctoral Research Officer position at the Middle East Studies Centre, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics (LSE) and a master’s from Oxford in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. Her research focuses on religious political movements, secularism, sectarianism, and nation-building in Turkey and the Middle East, particularly examining the Alevi movement and the role of the Diyanet.

Education: PhD in Government (LSE, 2015), MSt in Modern Middle Eastern Studies (Oxford), and earlier academic qualifications in economics and political science.

Research interests include the interplay between religion and state, authoritarian persistence, nationalism, and transnational identity politics. Her work challenges traditional binaries between secularism and religious politics, emphasizing institutional dynamics within the Turkish state. Recent publications analyze Alevi mobilization, sectarian securitization post-2011 Arab uprisings, and the historical role of religious institutions in shaping Turkish politics.

Her book Religious Politics in Turkey: From the Birth of the Republic to the AKP (2018) reinterprets Islamist mobilization as rooted in state institutions rather than grassroots movements. Key themes across her work include religious majoritarianism, the persistence of authoritarian systems, and the evolving role of Islamic authority.

Ceren serves as Associate Editor of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and lead editor for the BIAA Contemporary Turkey series. She has contributed to policy analyses via the Economist Intelligence Unit and academic podcasts.