Prof. Feride Acar is a 2024 Mercator-IPC Visiting Senior Fellow. She has been a faculty member in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey, for almost forty years, where she has taught courses on political sociology and social movements. She is the Founding Chairperson of METU’s Gender and Women’s Studies Graduate Program, where she taught international women’s human rights courses for many years. 

Throughout her professional life, Prof. Acar has been active in the international women’s rights and gender equality arena as an independent expert or a representative of Turkey in global and regional events. She has taken part in the negotiations, drafting, or monitoring the implementation of several fundamental international instruments on women’s rights and gender equality including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Beijing Platform for Action, CEDAW Optional Protocol, and the Istanbul Convention.

She has been a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) for many years (1997–2005, 2011–2018) and has served as the Chairperson of CEDAW (2003–2005). 

Prof. Acar was appointed as the only delegate of Turkey to the Council of Europe’s Ad-Hoc Committee on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (CAHVIO), where the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) was negotiated and drafted (2009–2010). Following the entry into force of the Istanbul Convention, Prof. Acar was elected (2015) as the President of GREVIO, the monitoring body of the Convention.

Prof. Acar is the recipient of several national and international awards for her work on women’s rights. In 2019, she was awarded the Council of Europe Pro Merito Medal, and in 2024 she was named as one of the “Council of Europe 75 Years, 75 Women.”