Hello, my name is Selen (seh-LEN 🔊). I am the Marilyn J. Gittell Postdoctoral Fellow in Urban Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, where I help run the Gittell Urban Studies Collective. I am a sociologist who studies how people organize to change public policy and institutions in conflicts over taxation, affordable housing, and higher education. I'm especially interested in how moral claims about fairness and responsibility shape the politics and policies of redistribution.

My research has been supported by the Center for Engaged Scholarship (Dissertation Fellow) and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE Early Career Workshop, 2025). 

I earned an MA and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Washington in Seattle, where I taught as an instructor and teaching assistant in the sociology department and worked as a research assistant at the UW Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity (CERSE). I also hold a BA in Sociology with a minor in political science and international relations from Boğaziçi University in İstanbul, Türkiye.

Feel free to get in touch with me at sguler@gc.cuny.edu, or check out some of my research on Google Scholar.