Yüksel Sezgin is the director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program and an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Ankara, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of London (SOAS), and the University of Washington. Prior to Syracuse University, he taught at the University of Washington, Harvard Divinity School, and the City University of New York. He has held visiting positions/fellowships at Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University (PIIRS, LAPA), Columbia University (IRCPL), Bielefeld University (ZiF), the American University in Cairo, and the University of Delhi. His research and teaching interests include legal pluralism, comparative religious law (Islamic, Jewish, and Hindu), and human/women’s rights in the Middle East, South Asia, and West Africa. His scholarly articles on comparative law, religion, and politics have appeared in various edited volumes and journals. He is the author of Human Rights under State-Enforced Religious Family Laws in Israel, Egypt and India (Cambridge University Press, 2013). He is currently working on a new book, "Making “Shari‘a” and Democracy Work: The Regulation and Application of Muslim Family Laws in Non-Muslim Democracies" (under contract with Cambridge University Press). He is the recipient of American Sociological Association's Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Prize (2014), the American Political Science Association's Aaron Wildavsky Dissertation Award (2008), and the Middle East Studies Association's Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award (2008).

Political Science

Arab States

Islamic World

Israel

Israeli Pols

Legal Pluralism, Family Law

State-Society Rltns, Democtzn