Selen Güler is the 2025-26 Marilyn J. Gittell Postdoctoral Fellow in Urban Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a sociologist who studies how people organize to change public policy and institutions in conflicts over taxation, housing, and higher education. Selen is especially interested in how moral claims about fairness and responsibility shape shared understandings of institutional legitimacy.

Selen’s current book project asks how Seattle developed and implemented an innovative business tax that funds affordable housing. Through a comparative analysis of key moments in the 2017-2020 push for taxation, she traces shifts in tax coalitions and redistributive arrangements in public finance. This research shows how tax policy became a site of urban mobilization in tech-boom Seattle, with contested answers to what city government is for. This research has been supported by the Center for Engaged Scholarship.

Selen earned an MA and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Washington in Seattle. They also hold a BA in Sociology with a minor in Political Science and International Relations from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey.

Selen can be reached at sguler@gc.cuny.edu.