Hüseyin Emre Ceyhun

Hi! I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, and a fellow at both the Center for Statistics and Machine Learning and the Center for International Security Studies. My research broadly explores digital-age authoritarianism through elite politics, institutional adaptation, and political behavior, with a regional emphasis on the Middle East and North Africa.

My book project, Autocratization in an Age of Digitalization, examines how elite access to digital media in authoritarian countries paradoxically empowers elites while undermining ruling party discipline and loyalty, destabilizing the very foundations of authoritarian rule.  

My recent projects investigate two key dynamics in authoritarian countries: first, how citizens mistakenly attribute technological progress to effective governance - even when such advancements stem from global trends rather than state-led initiatives; and second, how autocrats repurpose traditional tools of social control—such as religion and propaganda— in the digital age. My work has been published or forthcoming in Comparative Politics, Mediterranean Politics and other outlets. For more details on my research, please visit my Research page!

My research has been supported by Princeton’s Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, the Center for International Security Studies, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. I hold a Master of Arts with High Honors in Economics from Sabanci University, and a Bachelor of Arts with High Honors in Political Science and International Relations from Bogazici University.