Prior to joining the University of Amsterdam, Kurban was a post-doctoral fellow at iCourts at University of Copenhagen, and a Max Weber post-doctoral fellow at the European University Institute (EUI). 

Before joining academia, Kurban had over fifteen years of experience in policy oriented research. During 2005-2013, she took active part in Turkey’s democratization process at the country’s leading think tank, the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), most recently as the Director of its Democratization Program. During 2012-2019, Kurban was the Turkey expert of the Network of Independent Experts on Non-Discrimination, writing annual and ad-hoc reports addressed to the European Commission. 

Kurban’s current research interests are supranational human rights courts, systemic violations of human rights, rule of law and democracy, and legal mobilization, with a focus on authoritarian regimes. She explored these issues in her monograph titled Limits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict (CUP, 2020), which was awarded a Special Mention by the International Society of Public Law (ICON.S) Book Prize Committee. 

Kurban holds a PhD from Maastricht University Faculty of Law, a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School and a Master in International Affairs from Columbia University, which was fully funded by scholarships from Columbia University and the government of Turkey.