Bahar Baser is a Research Fellow at the Middle East Research Institute. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Warwick at the Department of Politics and International Studies between 2012 and 2014.
Bahar was educated in Istanbul and completed her BA in Political Science and International Relations, before obtaining a junior fellowship from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to study in Uppsala University for an MA in Peace and Conflict. Her research focus was on “Diasporas and Their Involvement in Peace Processes. She then awarded a competitive four-year grant by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to study MRes and PhD in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. Her PhD thesis was entitled “Inherited Conflicts: Contentious Diaspora Spaces between the Second-Generation Turks and Kurds in Germany and Sweden”. Her doctoral research focused on, and challenged the phenomenon of, “imported conflicts” by examining the Turkish and Kurdish diasporas in Sweden and Germany in a comparative manner.
During her PhD, Bahar had the opportunity to work as a visiting research fellow at Humbolt University, Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences in Germany; Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) in Norrkoping, Sweden; and Instituto Ciencias Sociais in Lisbon, Portugal.
Bahar has numerous publications in international journals on conflict-generated diaspora groups and recently published a book in Turkey entitled: “Turkish-Kurdish Question in the Diaspora: Second-generation in Sweden and Germany.” She also has experience in broadcasting and journalism in her native country, Turkey.