Özlem Celik is a University Researcher at HELSUS and Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. She works on Social Sustainability of Urban Transformations in the Global South. Özlem's research concerns the political economy of urban development and change, including the politics of urban economic relations, housing, state interventions, rescaling of the state, and urban social movements. She is also interested in using participatory and collaborative methodological approaches in engagement with housing movements and activist groups. Özlem’s  previous research has focused on the financialisation of housing, and the limitations and possibilities of spatial politics of solidarity through commoning practices in Turkey.

She is currently completing a book on ‘Theories of the Spatiality of the State’, editing a special issue, which brings together a set of papers that examine financialisation of housing and violation of housing rights at the time of crisis and which thereby explore the contemporary state of neoliberal urbanisation in divergent political economic contexts, and co-ordinating the Urban and Regional Political Economy Working Group, IIPPE.

She has previously worked at Lund University, Yasar University, Middle East Technical University and The University of Sheffield, after obtaining a PhD in Urban Studies and Planning, an MA in Sociology, and a BA in Urban and Regional Planning.