Political Science, Boston University, 2015

International Relations & Political Science and History (Double Major), Boğaziçi University, 2003

Notre Dame de Sion High School

Erzen Oncel holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Boston University and a double major in Political Science & International Relations and History from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. She has held visiting fellowships at leading institutions, including the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC (2011-2012). Currently, she is a Faculty Affiliate at the Albright Institute for Global Affairs at Wellesley College (2024-2025) and Visiting Non-Residential Fellow at Guinier Project, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, Harvard Law School.

Her academic research focuses on three main areas: descriptive representation of social groups, particularly ethnic minorities and women, historical political institutions, and leadership studies. Her work in these fields began with the Global Leadership Project (GLP), a large-scale dataset funded by the World Bank and the Clinton Global Initiative at Boston University.  GLP is the first global-scale dataset compiling biographical information on over 75,000 political leaders from 162 nation-states. Since its inception in 2010, she has served as co-principal investigator (with Prof. John Gerring, U. of Texas at Austin) and project manager of GLP.

Personal Website: erzenoncel.com

Comparative Government, Research Methods

Research Methods

Comparative Political Institutions: Political Parties and Election Systems