Melehat Kutun is a political and social scientist who worked as an assistant professor at Mersin University until 2016, when she lost her position alongside many other Academics for Peace. Consequently, she had to leave Turkey and continue her research in Germany. She is currently working at the University of Kassel on her own project, The Reshaping of Abortion Politics in Turkey: Understanding Islamic Right-Wing Populism Through the Differing Experiences of Three Groups of Gynaecologists, which is supported by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). She is also an associate fellow of IRGAC (International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies) based at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Her publications focus on contemporary politics in Turkey, critical state theories, critical gender studies and abortion politics, and forced political migration. She recently co-authored the publications Regime Change in Turkey: Neoliberal Authoritarianism, Islamism and Hegemony (Routledge, 2021) and Exiled Intellectuals: Encounters, Conflicts, and Experiences in a Transnational Context (two volumes, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).