Burak Kadercan

Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy, Naval War College



Prior to my appointment at the Naval War College, I was Lecturer in International Relations (open-ended contract) at the University of Reading (UK) and Assistant Professor in International Relations (tenure-track) and coordinator for the Master Program in International Security at Institut Barcelona D’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI).




You can find my CV here.




My opinion pieces have been published in The National Interest, openDemocracy, LSE'S EUROPP Blog, and I am a regular contributor for War on the Rocks

I am an Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. During Fall 2017 and Winter 2018, I was an inaugural fellow at the Center for Strategic Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2011. I am also a Senior Associate at the Center on Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups (CIWAG). I am the author of Shifting Grounds: The Social Origins of Territorial Conflict (Oxford University Press, September 2023). 


My research agenda lies at the intersection of IR theory, international security, political geography, and international history. I specialize in two broad topics. The first is the study of territory and territoriality in the context of international politics. The second topic involves the relationship between state-formation (or state failure) processes and production of military power. The cases I examine range from the Ottoman Empire to the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), or private military and security companies in present-day Iraq and Afghanistan. At the Naval War College, I teach on the self-proclaimed Islamic State as well as AQ and associated movements, strategic communications, India-Pakistan rivalry, nuclear strategy, and Turkish politics. My research has been published in International Security; International Theory; Review of International Studies; International Studies Review; Territory, Politics, Governance; Middle East Policy; Cambridge Review of International Affairs, and Global Studies Quarterly.