Zeynep is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield. Her main research areas involve borderlands, territoriality, conflict, peace, political legitimacy and gender in the Middle East. She has recently published a monograph entitled Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism with Cambridge University Press. Zeynep is co-editor of I.B. Tauris-Bloomsbury's Kurdish Studies Series and is also a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.

Zeynep has a PhD in International Relations from the LSE. She worked at the LSE Middle East Centre as a Research Fellow for six years. She was part of the UK DFID-Funded Conflict Research Programme and led projects on the gendered drivers of conflict in Iraq and the impact of genocide on the Yezidi community. She also conducted research on internal displacement in Iraqi Kurdistan, Women, Peace and Security and displacement in the Middle East, and women’s political participation in Kuwait. She published articles and reports on these topics as well as on Kurdish politics. She previously served as Specialist Adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee at the UK Parliament