She is currently a faculty member in the Department of International Relations at Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University and vice director of the Institute of Graduate Programs. Prof. Açıkalın graduated from the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University in 2012. She received her master’s degree with the thesis “Leadership in Chaos: Angela Merkel and Euro Crisis” at the Middle East Technical University in 2015. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in 2020 from the same university with her thesis “Political Leadership and Foreign Politics: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Angela Merkel”. She has been a guest researcher at Lancaster University in the U.K. and Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin in Germany within Jean Monnet Scholarship Program. Dr. Açıkalın works on leadership, Turkish foreign policy, chaos, and complexity theory, and Turkish-EU relations. She has remarkable journal publications on the integration of women and girls in migration studies. Dr. Açıkalın also focuses on climate refugees as well as gastro-diplomacy and fashion diplomacy in theory and practice. She is also the author of the book “Leadership Diplomacy in Turkish-German Relations”. She is the editor of Beyond Covid-19: Multidisciplinary Approaches and Outcomes on Diverse Fields was published in 2022 by WorldScientific. Açıkalın is also interested in city and health diplomacy, and she is a member of the advisory board of the Turkish Healthy Cities Union. She is a founding member of the International Science Association and Dr. Açıkalın was a participant of the Bali Democracy Forum 2019, Asian Civilizational Dialogue in Beijing, China. She has constantly given interviews to national and international media outlets.