Sinem Adar is the Head of the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) at Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in Berlin since January 2026. She previously worked as a research associate at CATS, SWP.  Since January 2024, she has been co-chairing the thematic working group “Challenge of Autocratisation” together with Dr. Muriel Asseburg.

 Adar has also been a member of the editorial board of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) since January 2026.

As part of her academic work, she served as a lecturer at Humboldt University of Berlin from October 2022 to April 2023, where she taught a course titled “Governing Wider Europe.”  Between February 2019 and October 2019, she was also an Einstein Fellow at the same university.

She received her PhD from the Department of Sociology at Brown University, where she studied from September 2007 to May 2014.