Damla Isik is Professor of Anthropology at Regis University's Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Criminal Justice. She has numerous publications on the politics of charitable giving, aid distribution and volunteerism in Turkey and the Middle East. She also publishes on issues concerning women's rights and gender in Turkey and the Middle East. Currently, she is working on a new project that studies women's agricultural cooperatives and their local/national effects in Turkey. In 2018 she was a Fulbright Scholar in Croatia at the University of Zadar where she advised students on their graduate writing projects, gave several lectures on her research and taught a graduate lecture course on women and gender in the Middle East. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona with a minor in Rhetoric and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Gender Studies. She also has an undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature.