Hişyar Özsoy earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in 2004 and 2010, respectively, from the University of Texas at Austin. Between 2011 and 2015, he taught courses on political sociology, cultural anthropology, and Middle Eastern cultures and politics at the University of Michigan-Flint. Mr. Özsoy served as a Kurdish member of the Turkish Parliament from 2015 to 2023. During his tenure, he also served as vice president of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and as the party’s spokesperson for foreign affairs. He represented Turkey in several transnational parliamentary bodies, including the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE PA), and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATOPA).