Aysenur Sonmez Kara

Aysenur Sonmez Kara

Aysenur Sonmez Kara

Office and Programs Coordinator

Ayşenur Sönmez Kara joined the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies in 2019. She received her Master’s degree in Middle East and Islamic Studies program at George Mason University in 2018. She earned her B.A. degree in International Relations from Uludağ University in Turkey. She was awarded an M.A. in the Sociology of Religion at the Faculty of Theology from same university. She also studied at the University of Siegen, Germany as an Erasmus exchange student during her sophomore year. Previously, she worked as a research assistant at the Center for Turkish Studies at the Middle East Institute in D.C. Her research interests include Syrian refugees in Turkey, secularization among Muslims, and the Islamic intellectual tradition.

Selected Publications

Book chapter

Kara, Ayşenur Sönmez. "Welcoming Syrian refugees in Turkey: The role of religious discourse in the case of Diyanet." In Religious Studies Scholars as Public Intellectuals, pp. 135-147. Routledge, 2018.

Book review

Kara, Ayşenur Sönmez. Review of Have a Little Faith: Religion, Democracy, and the American Public School, by Benjamin Justice and Colin Macleod, Journal of Education in Muslim Societies 1, no.1 (2019):69-71.

Conference, Symposium, and Panel Reports

Kara, Ayşenur Sönmez. "ISIS and the Challenge of Interpreting Islam: Text, Context, and Islam-in-Modernity." The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 34, no. 1 (2017): 162.