Defne Över is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University. Previously, she was an early career fellow at the Lichtenberg Kolleg, Göttingen University, Germany.  She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University. Her work centers on a set of important questions raised by the return of repressive regimes in the 21st century and the related processes of democratic backsliding and mass mobilization. Specifically, she explores strategies instrumentalized in centralization of power, uncertainties experienced by ordinary people, and how societal response to uncertainty transforms political institutions. Her studies on media transformation, national identity, social movements, and research methods have appeared in Media, Culture & Society; Current Sociology; Qualitative Sociology; Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change; Sage Research Method Cases; and in the edited volume of Authoritarianism and Resistance in Turkey: Conversations on Democratic and Social Challenges.