Selen Güler is the 2025-26 Marilyn J. Gittell Postdoctoral Fellow in Urban Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. Drawing on the traditions of comparative-historical sociology, cultural theories of the state, and urban scholarship, Selen studies how coalitions and movements organize to change public policy and institutions in conflicts over taxation, housing, and higher education. Selen’s work treats the spatial dynamics of capitalism as constitutive of the possibilities of political change, and centers iterative learning across reform attempts and movement cycles as a key mechanism through which change unfolds. She 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, 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. It 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. she also holds 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.