Halil Ibrahim Yenigün

Halil Ibrahim Yenigün is a visiting post-doctoral scholar at Stanford University's Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. In 2016-17, he was a fellow of Europe in the Middle East—the Middle East in Europe (EUME) at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. Previously, he was dismissed from his assistant professor position at Istanbul Commerce University soon after Erdoğan’s regime began the purge and persecution of non-loyal academics in reaction to the Petition for Peace. At the time, he was also a part-time Research Fellow at Sabancı University Istanbul Policy Center's POMEAS Project. Yenigün received his Ph.D. in August 2013 from the University of Virginia's (UVA) political theory program with his dissertation titled, The Political Ontology of Islamic Democracy: An Ontological Narrative of Contemporary Muslim Political Thought. He spent 2007-2008 as a research fellow in the Middle Eastern Studies Center at the American University in Cairo (AUC). Yenigün has published widely and given lectures at several universities in Turkey, US, and Germany as well as occasional interviews to numerous media sources on Muslim political thought, Islamism, peace activism, and Turkish democracy.

Yenigün's primary research is on comparative political theory with a specific focus on contemporary Muslim political thought and Islamism. He has been also involved, as a founder or officer, in several NGOs that work on human rights, social justice issues, and free circulation of ideas. He is among the group of academics in Turkey known as Academics for Peace. He currently lives in the U.S.