Amina Smits Akılma graduated from the Middle Eastern Studies Department at the University of Leuven in 2011. Originally from Belgium, Akılma received her master's degree in 2017 from the Institute of Civilizations Alliance at Fatih Sultan Mehmet University with a thesis titled “A Critical Examination of Edward Said's Orientalism in the Context of Ottoman-European Relations.” Her areas of work and interest include Orientalism, Islamophobia, post-colonialism, racism, the far right, and migration. In addition to his native language, Dutch, she speaks Turkish and English at a native level and reads Arabic and French. Since 2020, she has been writing the Netherlands and Belgium sections of the European Islamophobia Report. She works as a researcher at the Türkiye Research Foundation.