Dr. Ilke Toygür is Director of the Global Policy Center and Professor of Geopolitics of Europe at the IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs and a Senior Associate with the CSIS Europe Program. She has been chosen as a Mercator Fellow in 2024. Her main areas of expertise include European integration, EU institutions, elections and democracy in Western Europe, geopolitics of Europe, transatlantic relations, and Turkey’s relations with the West. She also serves as elected board member of Trans European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA) in Brussels. She holds a BA degree and an MA degree in Economics, an MA degree in Democracy and Government and PhD in Political Science.Dr. Toygür began her career back in 2008 working at the Economic Development Foundation (IKV), a research institute focusing on the European Union. In 2016, she completed her PhD degree in Political Science at Autonomous University of Madrid. Her doctoral research focused on the impact of European integration on the vote and party system change in Western Europe in times of crises. In 2015 she was granted Mercator-IPC Fellowship in Istanbul Policy Center. Following her PhD, she worked for the Elcano Royal Institute in Madrid, and for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Brussels. She has also been a Lecturer at the University Carlos III of Madrid and Visiting Researcher at the European University Institute (EUI), University of Mannheim, and Brookings Institution. Her research and articles have so far appeared in Carnegie Europe, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Brookings Institution, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Der Spiegel and El País, among others. She frequently comments on European affairs in international media. She is native in Turkish and speaks fluent English and Spanish.