Academic Profile

People Feature

Ozan Aksoy

Professorial Fellow
Associate Professor of Sociology

Ozan is a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College and an Associate Professor in Sociology at the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford. 

Prior to joining Oxford, he was an Associate Professor in Social Science at University College London. He has been an IOE Honorary Associate Professor at UCL since 2025.

His research interests include cooperation, trust, religious behaviour, and the political sociology of religion. He uses game theory, statistical and computational methods, and laboratory and natural experiments as research tools.

Ozan is the 2019 recipient of the Raymond Boudon Award of the European Academy of Sociology and the 2018 Robert K. Merton award of the International Network of Analytical Sociology. He is a Fellow of the European Academy of Sociology.

Ozan Aksoy I
Attribution:

(c) Tom Weller Photography

Publications

Six selected publications:

Aksoy, O., & Szekely, A. (2025). Making Sense of Honor Killings. American Sociological Review, 90(3), 427-454. https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224251324504

Aksoy, O., & Gambetta, D. (2022). Commitment through Sacrifice: How Longer Ramadan Fasting Strengthens Religiosity and Political Islam. American Sociological Review, 87(4), 555-583. https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221101204

Aksoy, O. Within-family influences on compliance with social-distancing measures during COVID-19 lockdowns in the United Kingdom. Nature Human Behaviour 6, 1660–1668 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01465-w 

Aksoy, O.,  Bann, D., Fluharty, M.E., & Nandi, A. (2022) Religiosity and Mental Wellbeing Among Members of Majority and Minority Religions: Findings From Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study, American Journal of Epidemiology, 191(1), 20–30. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwab133

Przepiorka, W. & Aksoy, O. (2021) Does Herding Undermine the Trust Enhancing Effect of Reputation? An Empirical Investigation with Online-Auction Data, Social Forces, 99(4), 1575–1600, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaa057

O. Aksoy & Billari, F.C. (2018) “Political islam, marriage, and fertility: Evidence from a natural experiment,” American Journal of Sociology, 123(5), 1296–1340, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/696193

All publications can be found here: https://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/people/ozan-aksoy#tab-5472536