Dr Baser joined Durham University’s School of Government and International Affairs as Associate Professor in Middle East Politics in 2021. She is an active member of the Institute for Middle East and Islamic Studies at Durham University. Previously, she was Associate Professor at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University where she led the “Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation Research Group”. Prior to that, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Warwick at the Department of Politics and International Studies between 2012 and 2014. Dr. Baser completed a PhD in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. During her PhD, she had the opportunity to work as a Visiting Research Fellow at Humboldt University (Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences) in Germany, REMESO (Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society) in Norrkoping, Sweden and the Instituto de Ciencias Sociais (ICS) in Lisbon, Portugal. She is an expert in the area of migration and diaspora studies, peacebuilding and conflict transformation, with a regional focus on the Middle East. She has conducted extensive research on conflict-generated diasporas’ engagement in peace processes, post-conflict reconstruction and state-building in the Global South. She has published extensively on Middle Eastern diasporas activism and mobilisation in Europe and beyond with a specific focus on host states’ counterterrorism policies, radicalisation of diaspora members and transnationalisation of homeland conflicts. She is the editor of Kurdish Studies Series published by Lexington Books and the co-editor of Diasporas and Transnationalism Series published by Edinburgh University Press. She is also a senior associate research fellow at the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa (SIGLA), Stellenbosch University, South Africa and visiting professor at Tampere Peace Research Institute, Tampere University, Finland. Her research has been funded by the CBRL, Swedish Institute, European Union, British Academy, Newton Fund, Thomson Reuters Foundation as well as Italian and Swedish Foreign Ministries. She is currently the Chair of the Ethnicity, Migration and Nationalism Section of the International Studies Association where she also serves as the member of the Governing Council.
Dr Bahar was elected a CBRL Trustee in December 2023 and serves on CBRL’s Research Committee.