Hakan Sandal-Wilson is Assistant Professor of Gender, Peace and Security at the Department of Gender Studies. He is a political sociologist whose teaching and research explore how gender and sexuality intersect with democracy, conflict, and ethnic and religious difference. His work focuses on the Middle East and North Africa and is grounded in a commitment to social justice, inclusive democracy, and critical engagement with power.

Hakan’s current research investigates social and political movements in conflict-affected states and societies in the Middle East and North Africa, with a particular focus on Turkey. It seeks to understand how these movements and their actors reimagine and transform society, politics, and democracy. Alongside this, he researches migrant communities, focusing on their interactions with feminist and queer/LGBTIQ+ politics, and their experiences of and engagement with democracy, particularly in the UK. His work has been published in Social Research: An International Quarterly, South Atlantic Quarterly and Migration Letters, and he edited a special issue on Kurdish Queer Studies in Kurdish Studies Journal. He is currently preparing his first monograph, on Kurdish queer/LGBTQI+ politics, conflict and democracy in Turkey.

Hakan is interested in developing research methods and methodologies in dialogue with creative writing and literature. He has recently worked on a co-edited volume with Natasha Tanna (York) and Abeyamí Ortega (Manchester), titled Creative Critical Interventions for Social Justice, which is forthcoming with UCL Press in 2026. This collection brings together creative-critical writing and politically engaged, social-justice oriented research, experimenting with forms of knowledge production that move beyond conventional academic norms. 

Hakan served as Campaigns Officer for Amnesty UK’s LGBTI Network from 2018 to 2022, and is committed to connecting research expertise with contemporary social and political issues. His commentaries on democracy, social justice, and conflict have appeared in various outlets, such as Jadaliyya and openDemocracy, and his work has been translated into French, Spanish, Turkish and Portuguese. 

He first joined LSE in 2022 as a Fellow at the Department of Sociology, where he taught on gender and sexuality; ‘race’, racism, and ethnicity; and social theory. Before joining LSE, he was a Teaching Associate in Sociology at Downing College, University of Cambridge, and an Affiliated Lecturer at the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies. He holds an MA in Cultural Studies from Istanbul Bilgi University, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies.