Delal Aydin is a Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID), where she teaches on migration, borders, and rights. Her research combines historical sociology and political anthropology to examine community-building within Kurdish political mobilization and the role of intimacy and friendship in shaping political subjectivity under conditions of state violence. Drawing on lived familiarity with the Kurdish political world she studies, her scholarship is grounded in long-standing engagement with communities in Turkey and across the European diaspora.

She earned her PhD in Sociology from the State University of New York at Binghamton, and her current work investigates friendship and the everyday relations through which Kurdish transnational mobilization and diaspora politics are sustained across Berlin, Brussels, and Geneva. Delal previously held postdoctoral positions at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence (2020–21), the University of Duisburg-Essen (Philipp Schwartz Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, 2021–24), and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Institute for European Ethnology, Gerda Henkel Foundation, 2024–25).

Her work has been recognized with the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Global Academy Award (2024–25) and a Scholars at Risk Scientific Exchange Scholarship from the Swiss National Science Foundation (2025–26). She has also contributed to policy-oriented dialogue on Kurdish issues, including as moderator of the 19th International Conference on the European Union, Turkey, the Middle East and the Kurds at the European Parliament.