Place of birth: Ankara, Turkey

Parentage: son of the late Talât Işın and Gülten Silman

Family: married Evelyn S. Ruppert

Education: BCP, City Planning, Middle East Technical University, Ankara 1982; MA, Geography, University of Waterloo 1984; PhD, Geography, University of Toronto 1990

Career: Engin Isin is Professor of Citizenship in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the Open University. Before he joined the Open University in 2007, he was Canada Research Chair at York University, Toronto from 2002–07 where he founded the Citizenship Studies Media Lab (CSML). Through CSML he supervised a generation of postgraduate students and developed and taught a number of graduate seminars. These included Citizenship, Space, Identity, Themes in Citizenship Studies (Queer Citizenship, Governing Citizens, and The Neurotic Citizen) and Theorizing Acts. He also developed and taught an undergraduate course The Culture of Cities. His research focuses on the three essential aspects of politics: subjects, sites and scales. He has been investigating the concept of ‘acts’ especially as it pertains to those acts that constitute subjects as claimants of justice. Following the publication of Being Political in 2002, he has investigated various acts such as suicide bombing and abjection, as well as various acts that can be considered as acts of citizenship such as civic gift giving in oriental and occidental societies. Engin Isin is Joint Chief Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies (see url below).

Publications include: Cities Without Citizens 1992, Citizenship and Identity (with P. K. Wood) 1999, Being Political 2002; numerous peer-reviewed articles in academic journals

Contact details: Address: Department of Politics and International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, England; Tel: +44 (0)1908 654431; Fax: +44 (0)1908 654488; Email: e.f.isin@open.ac.uk ; Website: http://www.enginfisin.eu/ ; Website: http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/about-the-faculty/departments/politics/ ; Website: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/13621025.asp/ .