Soli Özel holds a BA in Economics from Bennington College (1981) and an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) (1983). Özel is currently a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, where he was a “Europe’s Futures” fellow in... Read more
Soli Özel holds a BA in Economics from Bennington College (1981) and an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) (1983).
Özel is currently a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, where he was a “Europe’s Futures” fellow in 2021–2022. During the COVID pandemic, he taught courses at the American University in Central Asia (AUCA) and at the Menton campus of Sciences Po. During that time, he also hosted two webinar series for Institut Montaigne on the 2020 American elections and the changing geopolitics of the Middle East. He was a Bernstein Fellow at the Schell Center for Human Rights at Yale Law School and a visiting lecturer in the Political Science Department at Yale. He has been a columnist at Nokta magazine and GazetePazar, as well as for Yeni Binyıl, Sabah, and Habertürk newspapers. He currently writes for the Institut Montaigne blog and Aposto, and provides weekly commentary on world affairs for Medyascope TV. His articles have been published in numerous international publications.
He held fellowships at Oxford University and the EU Institute of Strategic Studies. He was a Keyman Fellow at Northwestern University and a Fisher Family Fellow of the “Future of Diplomacy Program” at the Belfer Center at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He has taught at UC Santa Cruz, SAIS, University of Washington, Northwestern University, Hebrew University, Sciences Po – PSIA, AUCA, and Yale. In Turkey, he taught at Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, Bilgi Üniversitesi, and Kadir Has Üniversitesi. He was a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin (2015–2017), and a visiting fellow at Institut Montaigne in Paris in 2018, where he is now a non-resident senior fellow.
His co-authored book with Michael T. Rock, Elite Origins of Development and Democracy, was published by Routledge in December 2023.
He is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Soli Özel is a permanent fellow at Institut Montaigne, where he writes for their blog. He also teaches the inaugural day geopolitics classes for incoming MBA students at École Supérieure des Affaires in Beirut.