Ufuk Poyraz was born in 1985 in Adana. He earned his B.Sc. in Political Science and Public Administration from the Middle East Technical University (METU). He subsequently pursued his graduate studies at METU, where he completed both his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in the Urban Policy Planning and Local Governments Program. During this period, he also served as a research assistant in the same department. He was awarded his Ph.D. in 2022 with a dissertation titled “Housing as a Locus of Capital Accumulation and Hegemony: Towards a Methodological and Theoretical Analysis of National and Local Level Dynamics in Turkey.” Between 2022 and 2024, he carried out postdoctoral research as a visiting scholar at the Complutense University of Madrid, where his work focused on affordable housing alternatives in the Global South. Poyraz has taught courses at both METU and Ankara Science University. Since 2024, he has also been involved in a TÜBİTAK-1001 research project examining the sustainability of public service delivery in rural neighborhoods.