Dilek Kurban is a Max Weber post-doctoral fellow at the European University Institute (2021-2022) and a member of the adjunct faculty at the Hertie School. Her research interests are regional human rights courts, state violence, legal mobilization and judicial politics, with a particular focus on authoritarian regimes and a regional focus on Turkey. She obtained her PhD from Maastricht University Faculty of Law in 2018. She also holds a Juris Doctor (JD) from Columbia Law School and a Master in International Affairs (MIA) from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Her dissertation, which received the Erasmus Dissertation Prize 2019 in the Netherlands, and was published as Limits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict (Cambridge Univesity Press, 2020). Kurban’s Her research has also been published in edited volumes and in peer-reviewed journals, including Human Rights Law Review and Columbia Human Rights Law Review. Between 2012 and 2019, she was the Turkey expert of the European Commission’s Network of Independent Experts in the Non-Discrimination Field. Before transitioning to academia, during 2005-2013, she engaged in policy-oriented research at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), most recently as the Director of its Democratization Program. During the same period, she wrote regular columns in Turkey’s leading newspapers and frequently appeared on international media to discuss her research and to comment on human rights and democratization in Turkey. Earlier in her career, Kurban worked as an Associate Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations Department of Political Affairs in New York.
Research Areas: Regional Human Rights Courts, State Violence, Legal Mobilization and Judicial Politics, Authoritarian Regimes
Select Publications:
The Authoritarian Slide, Large-Scale Violations and the Limits of the European Court of Human Rights”, in The European Court of Human Rights: Current Challenges in Historical and Comparative Perspective, eds H.P. Aust and E. Demir-Gürsel. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021.
Limits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Forsaking Individual Justice: The Implications of the European Court of Human Rights Pilot Judgment Procedure for Victims of Gross and Systematic Violations. Human Rights Law Review (2016) 16:4, 731-769.
