Yunus Emre Orhan

Yunus Emre Orhan joined Denison University in 2025 as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs. Previously, he was an NSF–funded Postdoctoral Fellow with the Digital Society Project. Orhan’s research examines how polarization and identity conflicts shape electoral behavior, elite strategies, and the resilience of democratic institutions across diverse political contexts. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Democratization, Computational Communication Research, and Ethnopolitics. His research and writing have also appeared in public outlets such as The Washington Post, and it has been covered by The Atlantic, Medium, and POTUS Radio’s The Trendline. He is a member of the Connect Elicit Learn Lab and co-organizes the Polarization Consortium workshops and an annual mini-conference at the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) on the Politics of Polarization. Outside of academia, he enjoys reading, camping with family and friends, inventing games with his daughter, and long conversations on the trail during hikes.