Wobig, poli sci student present Reeves research at major conference

By Chuck Gordon

Derya Ulucay's Reeves Summer Research project last year taught her a lot. For one thing, she learned how much she still has to learn about her research area of interest - authoritarian regimes - and the process of doing high-level research in general.

"I learned that this is going to be a long process," she says. "It's not going to be me mastering it by doing two years of summer research. It's kind of like a lifelong thing."

It's encouraging that her enthusiasm for the topic, and for doing graduate work in political science, hasn't waned even after an intensive summer of studying the effects of repression on opposition groups' efforts to push back on authoritarian leaders. Ulucay and Dr. Jacob Wobig, associate professor of political science, presented their findings - "Structural Constraints and Tactical Choices: Opposition Strategies in Authoritarian Regimes" - late last month at the International Studies Association annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio.

The conference is one of the largest gatherings of political scientists in the world, and it's rare for an undergraduate to make a presentation there. But Wobig says that Ulucay, a senior who's on track to graduate in December, was uniquely suited to the task.

After all, she took the prospect of poring over roughly 300 book chapters and articles, teasing out the relevant data points, analyzing all of it and then putting it into a 60-page paper as a welcome opportunity, not a burden.

"She really wanted to do it," Wobig says. "I said, 'This is going to be very difficult, much harder than any class paper you've ever written. But if you want to go on to graduate school and do a Ph.D., you need to learn that you're playing at a different level there, and it might be good to see that.' And she was excited about that."

"I really enjoy learning," she says.

Ulucay hails from Turkey, where she lived until her junior year of high school, when she moved with her father to Las Vegas. Having studied only a little English in school, she "didn't talk for a long time" at her Vegas high school, waiting until she'd mastered an American accent before opening up.

Four years later, she found herself speaking eloquently for four minutes, with the merest trace of a Turkish accent, to a roomful of professional poli sci researchers. She discussed the theory behind the research before giving way to Wobig, who went over the data.

"I think I was the youngest person there, honestly," Ulucay says. "Me having the least time spent in this field, it's both kind of a privilege but also very intimidating."

"It was unusual for the audience to see an undergraduate presenting," Wobig says. "Derya got a little bit of credibility with the audience for that."

Their hypothesis was that in an oppressed, polarized society, higher repression of opposition groups would lead to less mobilization, because splintered opposition factions would be less willing to risk being oppressed themselves if they saw another opposition group being oppressed.

During their research, Ulucay and Wobig caught a break in August of 2025 when the Peace Research Institute Oslo released its Opposition, Mobilization and Groups dataset, providing them with much more granular data than they expected would be available when they began the project.

But even with that data, their suppositions were not proven. In highly polarized societies, the data showed that repression caused opposition parties to band together.

"We thought in general that greater polarization would lead to greater mobilization," Wobig says. "But if it were combined with high repression, we thought that would cause mobilization to crater. … Instead, it actually brings everybody out.

"What I really think is going on is that, even though this data is better, it still isn't precise enough to determine whether polarization as it's being measured is the same as polarization as we're imagining it. That's the next thing we're going to try to work on."

"Our hypothesis didn't really represent what we found," Ulucay says, "but we think there's also a big value in that."

The pair have applied for a second consecutive Reeves Summer Research grant in order to investigate further. The whole process has shown Ulucay the amount of work it takes to tackle Ph.D.-level research. Setbacks occur, you hit a wall, a line of inquiry doesn't pan out, but you have to keep going.

None of it has dissuaded her from going on to earn a master's and, potentially, a doctorate. That's not unexpected coming from a triathlete who has helped Wingate to a national championship and a pair of runner-up finishes in the national meet.

She's used to fighting through pain and discomfort and sticking with something for the long haul.

"If I would connect it to sports, it's not always going forward," she says. "There's a lot of setbacks. And I feel like research is also like that. You get stuck on something. You get demotivated in something. You go back and read the same thing over and over again. You forget about the articles you read and you have to go back. It's not really a linear process."

Learn more about Wingate's political science major.

April 12, 2026