Professional Bio

I am a sociologist who utilizes quantitative and computational methods to study the relationship between religion and politics, as well as the factors shaping ethnic and racial prejudice, and anti-immigrant sentiments across both Western and non-Western contexts. Some of the topics I explore include:

• Religious change and political backlash
• Nationalism and trust in science
• Electoral dynamics and anti-immigrant attitudes

My M.A. thesis, which received the 2024 Huber-Form Sociology Master Thesis Award from Pennsylvania State University, extends group threat theory by comparatively analyzing anti-immigrant attitudes among minority and majority groups across 33 European countries.

Before joining Penn State, I earned an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Mannheim as a DAAD-TEV scholarship holder and a B.A. from Boğaziçi University. During this time, I conducted research at institutions such as the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) and Koç University’s Migration Research Center (MiReKoc).

My work has appeared in Social Forces, and featured in different media outlets.

Publications

Atac, Ibrahim Enes, and Gary J. Adler Jr. 2025. “Religious Rebound, Political Backlash, and the Youngest Cohort: Understanding Religious Change in Turkey.” Social Forces 103(3):1144–66. doi: 10.1093/sf/soae102.