Prof. Atıf Akgün was born in 1984 in Emirâlem, Menemen, İzmir. He completed his primary, secondary, and high school education in Menemen. In 2006, he graduated first in his class from the Department of Turkish Language Education at Dokuz Eylül University, Buca Faculty of Education. That same year, he began his postgraduate studies at the Ege University Institute of Turkic World Studies, receiving his doctorate in 2012 with a thesis defended in the Department of Turkish World Literatures.

 

In 2013, he was appointed as an assistant professor in the Department of Contemporary Turkish Dialects and Literatures at Bartın University. Between 2014 and 2016, he served as an assistant professor in the Department of Modern Turkish Literature at Düzce University's Turkish Language and Literature Department. Akgün has published articles and books in national and international publications in the fields of Contemporary Turkish Literature, Turkish World Literatures, and Balkan Turkic Literatures; he has presented various papers on Balkan Turkic and Turkish World Literatures both domestically and internationally. Akgün has held administrative positions within various higher education institutions in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Albania, and Bulgaria, and has served as a project leader and researcher in numerous scientific projects (TÜBİTAK, YTB, Yunus Emre Institute, Maarif Foundation, TİKA, etc.). He has participated as an organizer and attendee in many scientific events on the Turkic World and Balkan Turks. He is the founder and publisher of the international, Tr-Dizin-indexed journal “Studies on Turkish Language and Literature in the Balkans,” which began publication in 2019. He is also the chair of the organizing committee for the Symposium on Studies on Turkish Language and Literature in the Balkans, the first held at Ege University in İzmir and the second at the International Balkan University in Skopje.

 

Since 2016, Akgün has been a faculty member at the Department of Turkic World Literatures, Institute of Turkic World Studies, Ege University, and received the title of Associate Professor from YÖK (Interuniversity Council) in 2019. Atıf Akgün was appointed as a visiting lecturer at the Department of Turkology, Baku State University, Azerbaijan, by the Ministry of National Education through the Inter-Ministerial Joint Culture Commission of the Republic of Turkey between 2018 and 2020. He completed his second undergraduate degree in Sociology at Anadolu University in 2024. In 2025, he was appointed as a Professor at Ege University.

 

Prof. Atıf Akgün is married and has one child.