Soli Özel, Benningon College’dan (1981) Ekonomi alanında lisans ve Johns Hopkins Üniversitesi İleri Uluslararası Çalışmalar Okulu’ndan (SAIS-1983) Uluslararası İlişkiler alanında yüksek lisans derecelerine sahiptir.
İstanbul Kadir Has Üniversitesi’nde kıdemli öğretim üyesi olan Özel, 2021-2022 yıllarında Viyana’daki İnsan Bilimleri Enstitüsü’nde (IWM) “Avrupa’nın Geleceği” bursiyeri olarak bulundu. Pandemi döneminde Orta Asya’daki Amerikan Üniversitesi’nde (AUCA) ve Sciences-Po’nun Menton kampüsünde bir ders verdi. Aynı yıl Institut Montaigne için Amerikan seçimleri ve Orta Doğu’nun değişen jeopolitiği üzerine iki dizi web semineri düzenledi. Yale Hukuk Fakültesi Schell İnsan Hakları Merkezi’nde Bernstein Araştırmacısı ve Yale Siyaset Bilimi Bölümü’nde misafir öğretim görevlisi olarak bulundu. Nokta, GazetePazar, Yeni Binyıl, Habertürk ve Sabah gazetelerinde köşe yazarlığı yaptı. Halen Deutsche Welle-Türkçe ve Politikyol’da yazmakta ve GAzeteDuvar TV’de dünya meseleleri üzerine haftalık yorumlar yapmaktadır. Ayrıca Institut Montaigne’in bloguna katkıda bulunmaktadır.
Özel ayrıca, Oxford’da, AB Stratejik Araştırmalar Enstitüsü’nde ve Harvard Üniversitesi Kennedy School of Government Belfer Center’da “Diplomasinin Geleceği Programı “nda Fisher Family Fellow olarak bulundu. UC Santa Cruz, SAIS, University of Washington, Northwestern University, Hebrew University, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, SciencesPo-PSIA ve Yale’de dersler verdi. 2015-2017 yılları arasında Berlin’deki Robert Bosch Akademisi’nde Richard von Weizsacker bursiyeri idi ve 2018 yılında Paris’teki Institut Montaigne’de misafir araştırmacı olarak bulundu.
Michael T. Rock ile birlikte yazdığı kitabı Elite Origins of Development and Democracy Aralık 2023’te Routledge tarafından yayımlandı.
Avrupa Dış İlişkiler Konseyi üyesidir.

Soli Özel holds a BA in Economics from Benningon College (1981) and an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS-1983).
A senior lecturer at Istanbul Kadir Has University, Özel was a “Europe’s Futures” fellow at Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna in 2021-2022. In the year of the pandemic, he taught a course at the American University in Central Asia (AUCA) and at the Menton campus of Sciences-Po. The same year he also hosted two series of webinars for Institut Montaigne on the American elections and the changing geopolitics of the Middle East. He was a Bernstein Fellow at the Schell Center for Human Rights at Yale Law School and a visiting lecturer in the Political Science Department of Yale. He has been a columnist at Nokta magazine and GazetePazar, Yeni Binyıl, Habertürk and Sabah newspapers. Currently he writes for Deutsche Welle-Turkish, Politikyol and does a weekly commentary on world affairs for GAzeteDuvar TV. He is also a contributor to the blog of Institut Montaigne. He held fellowships at Oxford, the EU Institute of Strategic Studies and was a Fisher Family Fellow of the “Future of Diplomacy Program” at the Belfer Center of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He taught at UC Santa Cruz, SAIS, University of Washington, Northwestern University, Hebrew University, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, SciencesPo-PSIA, and Yale. He was a Richard von Weizsacker fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin between 2015-2017 and a visiting fellow at Institut Montaigne in Paris in 2018.
His co-authored book with Michael T. Rock, Elite Origins of Development and Democracy was published by Routledge in December 2023.
He is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Most recently he published
With Gökçe Uçar
“The Economics of Turkey-Russia Relations”, EDAM Report for Chrest Foundation on
Turkey-Russia Relations; (I was also the editor of the project)
“At the End of the Day, Where Will Turkey Stand?” for Istituto Affari Internazionali
With Selin Nasi, “How the Syrian Civil War Shifted the Balance of Power in
Turkish–Israeli Relations” in Contemporary Israeli–Turkish Relations in Comparative
Perspective, by Ayşegül Sever and Orna Almog, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019
With Evrim Görmüş, “US Policies Adrift in a Levant in Turmoil” Uluslararası İlişkiler,
Vol.15, Number: 60, 2018, s. 135-150
“The Transatlantic Drift and the Waning of Turkey’s ‘Strategic Westernness’ for
Heinrich Böll Stiftung, co-authored POLITICS OF POPULISM: POWER AND PROTEST IN
THE GLOBAL AGE” with Evren Balta
“The Kurds in the Middle East” with Arzu Yılmaz, in SIPRI Yearbook 2017
He is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
He is the co-author of “Elite 0rigins of Democracy and Development” to be published February 2024 by Routledge with Michael T. Rock