Zeynep N. Kaya is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Department of Development Studies at SOAS and an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. She completed her PhD in International Relations at LSE, where she conducted research on the transformation of Kurdish nationalism and territorial identity in an international context. Before moving to SOAS she worked as a Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre for six years. Primarily interested in gender, violence, and conflict, she has authored numerous papers and reports on Kurdish politics, as well as on gender, violence and displacement in the Middle East. Her book Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.