Karolin Tuncel

College: St Antony’s College

Department: Oxford Department for International Development

Thesis title: ‘Negotiations of Gender Norms in Everyday Life – Empirical insights from young couples in contemporary Turkey’

Supervisors: Professor Jörg Friedrichs and Professor Masooda Bano

Biography: Karolin Tuncel is a DPhil candidate at the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID), investigating everyday negotiations of gender norms among young couples in Turkey. Her project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) through the Heinrich Böll Foundation. 

Alongside her doctoral research, Karolin has held several teaching positions at the University of Oxford. She has also worked for the Dahrendorf Programme, researching discursive shifts in Turkey’s relation with Europe. 

Before starting her DPhil research, Karolin worked as a Carlo Schmid Fellow with the UN Liaison Office for Peace and Security (UNLOPS) in Brussels. Previously, she gained work experience at the Global Public Policy Institute, the German Embassy in Canada, and the Administration of the German Bundestag, among others.

As scholar of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, Karolin studied Political Science and International Relations in Berlin (BA), Cairo, Reims, and Cambridge (MPhil with Distinction).

Selected Publications:

Tuncel, Karolin I. M., and Tobias Müller (forthcoming). “Is religion a problem for intersectional theory? Muslim women, feminism, and varieties of patriarchy.” Contemporary Political Theory.

Tuncel, Karolin. 2025. “‘It’s Not About Sex, It’s About Fıtrat’: Exploring Turkey’s Politics of Gender through a Religious Concept.” In Embracing Faith and Desire: Queer and Feminist Engagements with Islam and Christianity as Lived Religions, edited by Viola Thimm and Ferdiansyah Thajib, 1st edition, 15– 30. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003590880-6.

Tuncel, Karolin. 2021. Turkey’s New Emigration Wave and Its Implications. Manara Magazine 2021/1. https://manaramagazine.org/2021/03/turkeys-new-emigration-wave-and-its-implications/.

Tuncel, Karolin. 2021. 20 years of Women, Peace and Security: How we argue for participation matters. London School of Economics and Political Science Centre for Women, Peace and Security. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/wps/2021/01/21/20-years-of-women-peace-and-security-how-we-argue-for-participation-matters/.