Begüm Özkaynak

Begüm Özkaynak is a faculty member at the Department of Economics at Boğaziçi University. 

After completing her undergraduate and graduate studies at Boğaziçi University, she received an MPhil degree in Economics from the University of Manchester in 2000. She completed her doctoral studies in 2005 at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain. Her research focuses on sustainability, urban sustainability, local development and environmental policies, ecological economics, and political ecology. Her work particularly examines the political economy of the environment, socio-environmental movements, and energy and mining conflicts. She has published extensively on these topics and has also organized workshops and international conferences.

She has contributed to projects such as Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT), supported by the EU’s 7th Framework Programme, and Academic-Activist Co-Produced Knowledge for Environmental Justice (ACKNOWL-EJ), supported by the ISCC. In addition, she has served as a researcher in global environmental assessment processes, including the United Nations Global Environment Outlook (GEO) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). She is currently involved in NeurotechEU, a European University Alliance Initiative, where she works on societal needs, smart cities, and neurotechnological solutions, with a strong emphasis on fostering collaboration between academia, industry, and society.