Sercan Canbolat

Assistant Professor in Residence

Director of Abrahamic Programs, The Office of Global Affairs

Sercan Canbolat’s research focuses on leadership and belief systems in foreign policy, violent non-state actors, and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) politics, using operational code analysis, political psychology, and computational text analysis across multiple languages. He is the co-author of Leaders in the Middle East and North Africa: How Ideology Shapes Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2023), which received the “ISA Foreign Policy Analysis Best Book Award” in 2024. Sercan’s work has appeared in leading journals such as International Studies Review, Political Research Quarterly, and Polity. His scholarship bridges theory, method, and policy relevance, with particular emphasis on how leaders’ ideologies shape regional and international outcomes. His teaching spans international relations, comparative politics, and political psychology, with courses including Introduction to International Relations and Comparative Politics, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Relations in Movies, and Politics, Propaganda and Cinema.

See Selected Publications