I am a sociologist who utilizes quantitative and computational methods to study the relationship between religion and politics, as well as the factors shaping ethnic and racial prejudice, and anti-immigrant sentiments across both Western and non-Western contexts. Some of the topics I explore include:
- Religious change and political backlash
- Nationalism and trust in science
- Electoral dynamics and anti-immigrant attitudes
My M.A. thesis, which received the 2024 Huber-Form Sociology Master Thesis Award from the Pennsylvania State University, extends group threat theory by comparatively analyzing anti-immigrant attitudes among minority and majority groups across 33 European countries.
My work has been published in Social Forces, and I have presented at major conferences, including the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR).
Before joining Penn State, I earned an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Mannheim as a DAAD-TEV scholarship holder and a B.A. from Boğaziçi University. During this time, I conducted research at institutions such as the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) and Koç University’s Migration Research Center (MiReKoc).
Beyond academia, I make a conscious effort to engage in public discussions on my research areas. Check out Public Sociology to learn more about my non-academic endeavors.
For more details, please check out my CV. Feel free to reach out at iza5155@psu.edu, follow me on X or Bluesky, and explore my Google Scholar profile.
