Ayşe Öncü completed her PhD at Yale (1971) and started her teaching career at Middle East Technical University in Ankara. She moved to Boğaziçi University in the late 1970s, where she contributed to the establishment of a Sociology Department and taught for more than thirty years. She joined Sabancı University in 2003, to pursue her research interests on ongoing cultural struggles and power relations in contemporary Turkey, under the rubric of the Cultural Studies Program. She was the first woman to earn the title of Emeritus Professor at Sabancı University. She has published extensively in various international journals and edited volumes, focusing on questions of space, culture, and power, with special emphasis on Istanbul. She has been a member of the Academy of Sciences since 2013.