Hello, my name is Selen! I am the Marilyn J. Gittell Postdoctoral Fellow in Urban Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. I am a political and cultural sociologist, studying how people and institutions navigate questions of authority, responsibility, and redistribution in shifting historical contexts. 

My research spans urban tax debates and homelessness governance, collaborative change efforts in higher education, and moral judgments in consumer and healthcare settings.

I aim to connect sociological theory with policy debates and the work of practitioners. My work has been recognized by the Center for Engaged Scholarship (Dissertation Fellow, 2024-25), the ASA Section on the Sociology of Consumers and Consumption (Student Paper Award, 2025 Honorable Mention) and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (Early Career Workshop, 2025).

My current book project examines how municipal coalitions confront the limits of local governance under conditions of housing unaffordability, federal disinvestment, and political polarization. Centering Seattle's decades-long struggle over progressive taxation and housing affordability, it traces how repeated reform failures led to new coalitions and policy tools, expanding political possibilities.

You can get in touch with me at sguler@gc.cuny.edu or find some of this work on Google Scholar.