Umut Unal's Biography

Umut Unal graduated from Hacettepe University in 2004 with a BS in Economics, ranking second in the graduating class. He earned an MSc degree in Economics from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2006, an MA degree in Economics from Florida International University (FIU) in 2009, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Florida International University in 2012. 

Throughout his academic career, Dr. Unal has gained extensive experience in both research and teaching. He has served in various roles, including research assistant, teaching assistant, lecturer, researcher, assistant professor, associate professor, adjunct faculty member, and visiting scholar at multiple institutions. Currently, he holds the position of Head of the Macroeconomic Analyses Department at the Research Institute for Social and Labour Affairs (RILSA) in Czechia. He also serves as a Turkey Analyst/Reporter for Emerging Market Watch.

His research interests lie within the broad field of open economy macroeconomics, primarily in macroeconomics with a focus on empirical applications. Dr. Unal's papers have appeared in well-known international journals such as Regional Studies, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Empirical Economics, Kyklos, and Applied Economics. He presented his work at several conferences and seminars across the world. His dissertation is sponsored by FIU's Dissertation Year Fellowship given to Ph.D. students who have made excellent progress in writing their doctoral dissertations. During his work at Philipps-Universität Marburg, he is financed by a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Philipp-Schwartz-Initiative, which is given to scholars that have considerable research and teaching skills. His research is also awarded by the German State Fund (Ministry of Science and Arts) to highly qualified scientists. He is the recipient of the “2023 McGraw-Hill/Irwin Distinguished Paper Award" at the 50th anniversary meeting of the Federation of Business Disciplines conference in Houston, TX, USA.

During his academic career, Dr. Unal had the opportunity to lecture many undergraduate and MBA level classes to a group of students from more than 50 countries. His teaching evaluation scores, in all semesters and in all universities he has worked at so far, were far above department norms.