Profile Dr Zeynep Kaya joined the Department in May 2021, having previously worked at SOAS and the LSE. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the LSE. Her main research areas involve borderlands, territoriality, conflict, peace, political legitimacy and gender. She has recently published a monograph entitled Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism with Cambridge University Press. Zeynep is co-editor of I.B. Tauris-Bloomsbury’s book series on Kurdish studies and co-convenor of Kurdish Studies Series with the LSE Middle East Centre. She is also an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. Research interests My research adopts an international historical sociology approach to the study of territoriality, borderlands and political legitimacy in the Middle East. I examine how politics related to these concepts change over time in connection with the transformation of international norms in world history. I am particularly interested in understanding non-state political actors (either sub-national or transnational) through situating them within an international context. I specifically focus on the Kurds and other groups in the borderlands of the Ottoman Empire and contemporary states in ex-Ottoman territories.