Dr. Işıl Acehan is a faculty member at Bahçeşehir University. Acehan, who earned her master's and doctoral degrees from Bilkent University, specializes in migration from the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and the Middle East to North America and Europe, the Turkish diaspora, and Turkey-US relations. Acehan conducted her doctoral studies at Harvard University with a Fulbright scholarship. She has also worked for many years in the US and Europe with scholarships from the Smithsonian Institution, the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, Freie Universität Berlin (JFK Institute), and the Turkish Cultural Foundation. Acehan completed his postdoctoral studies in 2019 as a fellow at the Fondazione Per Le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII research center in Bologna, Italy. She then served as a visiting faculty member at George Mason University's Ali Vural Ak Global Islamic Studies research center, where she led and completed numerous projects over three years, including documentaries, exhibitions, and memorials related to Turkish immigrants in the United States. Acehan has also conducted workshops and seminars for both academia and the public on topics such as the historical and cultural relations between Turkey and the United States and effective public diplomacy activities.