Ayşe Zarakol is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Cambridge and a Politics Fellow at Emmanuel College. She grew up in Istanbul, Turkey and moved to the US to attend Middlebury College, Vermont (BA in Political Science and Classical Studies). Her graduate degrees are from University of Wisconsin – Madison (MA and PhD in Political Science).

Her research is at the intersection of historical sociology and IR, focusing on East-West relations, history and future of world order(s), conceptualisations of modernity and sovereignty, rising and declining powers, and Turkish politics in a comparative perspective. Her articles can be found in journals such as American Political Science Review, International Organization, International Affairs, International Theory, International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, among many others.

She is the author of After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West (Cambridge University Press, 2011), which deals with international stigmatisation and the integration of defeated non-Western powers (Turkey after WWI, Japan after WWII and Russia after the Cold War) into the international order. This book was also published in Turkish as Yenilgiden Sonra: Doğu Batı ile Yaşamayı Nasıl Öğrendi from Koç University Press (first in 2012, later reprints in 2019, 2023, 2024). Between 2013 and 2017, she oversaw an international collaboration which produced Hierarchies in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2017) [2019 ISA Theory section Honorable Mention].

Her most recent book, Before the West: the Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders, which advances an alternative global history for IR focused on (Eur)asia, was published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press. This book retheorises sovereignty, order and decline from a more global perspective. It has won best book prizes from the Social Science History Association (SSHA Sharlin Award), International Studies Association (ISA Ruggie Award), International Studies Association Northeast (ISA-NE Ferguson Award), ISA History section (HIST Guicciardini Prize), ISA Theory section (Best Book Honorable Mention) and American Political Science Association International Politics and History section (Jervis and Schroeder Award Honorable Mention).

Zarakol won the Rahmi Koç Medal of Science in 2023, given annually to one Turkish scholar under the age of 50 for outstanding international contributions to their discipline. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and the Academia Europea in 2024. In 2024, she was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Copenhagen.

Zarakol’s research has been recognised and supported by a number of funding bodies and professional associations such as the Council on Foreign Affairs, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, ERC, RCN, CRASSH (University of Cambridge). At the moment she is leading a multiple year British Academy Knowledge Frontiers grant that bring IR scholars and Global historians together to study historical periods of disorder.

Zarakol is currently an Associate Editor at International Organization (2022-7). Her next book will be a world history of strongmen (William Collins [UK]; Atlantic Grove [US]).