Begüm Özkaynak is a professor in the Department of Economics at Boğaziçi University (since 2005). She holds a BA and MA in Economics from Boğaziçi University, an MPhil in Economics from the University of Manchester, and a PhD in Ecological Economics and Environmental Management from ICTA, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. She held visiting positions at the University of Cambridge and Humboldt University, Berlin. She was a board member of the European Society of Ecological Economics (ESEE) from 2010 to 2018, serving as the elected secretary for two terms. She was also the chair of the local organizing committee for the 9th International ESEE Conference, held in Istanbul in 2011. Prof. Özkaynak served as the project coordinator for Boğaziçi University in the FP7-funded EJOLT (Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade) project from 2011 to 2015 and for the ACKnowl-EJ (Academic-Activist Co-Produced Knowledge for Environmental Justice) project from 2015 to 2019, funded by the International Social Science Council. She served as the coordinating lead author for the chapter on scenarios and transformative change in UNEP GEO-5 and was a lead author in the UNEP GEO-6 Regional Assessment. She was also a lead author for the Values Assessment in the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) between 2018 and 2022. She has been serving as the co-editor-in-chief for the Ecological Economics journal since January 2022.

Keywords for research interests: Sustainability, urban sustainability, political ecology, ecological economics, environmental conflicts, environmental justice, energy governance, participatory and transdisciplinary research methods