Dr. Rengin B. Firat is a Professor of Leadership and Change at Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change. She joined Antioch University in September 2024. Dr. Firat has previously worked as a tenure-track professor in R1 research universities (University of California, Riverside, and Georgia State University) and as a senior researcher in one of the top global HR consulting firms (Korn Ferry).
Dr. Firat is a senior scholar-practitioner who combines critical race theories with inclusive leadership and organizational change studies. She takes an innovative empirical approach that is community-based and interdisciplinary, integrating sociology with neurosciences. Her teaching and research focus on areas like the role of moral emotions and cognition in social behaviors, racial biases in the brain and how to overcome them, organizational culture and diversity, and the effects of emerging technologies (like AI) on social organizations.
Her methodological expertise is primarily focused on quantitative methods including survey and experiment design, instrumentation, sampling, complex data modeling (e.g., hierarchical modeling, structural equation models), functional brain imaging (fMRI) and other biometric data systems (EDA, ECG etc.). She has led several research projects collecting fMRI and survey data, nationally and internationally.
Dr. Firat’s research has been published in high impact journals like American Behavioral Scientist, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Social Science Research, Perspectives on Psychological Science and Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and has received funding from the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Department of Defense. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming Handbook of Neurosociology (Springer Press) and has a book project (under contract, Polity Press) on the Racialized Brain: The Neurosociology of Race and Racism.
Dr. Firat has received her PhD from the Sociology Dept. at University of Iowa in 2013 and has held a post-doctoral Researcher position at the Evolution, Cognition and Culture Laboratory at University of Lyon, France from 2013 to 2015. She also holds an MA in Sociology from the University of Iowa and a BA in Sociology from Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey. She is currently based out of Atlanta, Georgia, where she is also an elected board member and Education Committee co-chair of a food justice local non-profit, Slow Food Atlanta.
