I am an urban planner and geographer by training. I graduated from the Department of City and Regional Planning (with a minor degree in Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing) at Middle East Technical University, completed my MSc in Urban Planning and Policy at Politecnico di Milano; and MA in Town and Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield. I received a PhD in Economic Geography on the topic of 'Dynamics and Drivers of Turkish Regional Development' from the University of Birmingham under the supervision of Prof Michael Taylor and Prof John Bryson. I took up researcher and lectureship positions at the University of Birmingham, University of Aberdeen, University of Bristol and Oxford Brookes University before taking up my current position in the Department of Management in the Built Environment at the Delft University of Technology in October 2017.