Muzaffer Şenel is a scholar of European Studies and comparative foreign policy broadly defined, with a focus on European foreign policy toward the Middle East, the Foreign Policy of Turkey, the Cyprus issue, Politics of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. He is currently serving as an assistant professor at the Department of International Relations at Istanbul Kültür University. Before joining İstanbul Kültür, he worked at several universities. He served as the founding member of İstanbul Şehir University (2007-2010) where he served as the Director of the Research Center for Modern Turkish Studies (2010-2021). As a visiting scholar, Şenel has been in various countries such as Hungary (Teleki Lázsló Institute, renamed as IFAT), Poland (Jagiellonian University) and the UK (Oxford University), Armenia (American University of Armenia).

Şenel has been participating in and actively contributing to various diplomatic and semi-academic events. He has been part of a multinational track II diplomacy team comprising high-level diplomats, politicians, policy-makers, academics and journalists, aiming to resolve the ongoing rifts in MENA to ensure stability in the immediate European neighborhoods.

He has published academic and op-eds in various journals and periodicals. He appeared on many international media outlets including Al- Jazeera, Channel News Asia, the Jerusalem Post, Sputnik, and TRT World among others as a political analyst and commentator. He edited two books, with Sadık Ünay, titled “Global Orders and Civilizations: Perspectives from History, Philosophy and International Relations”, Nova Science Publications, New York, 2009; and with Mesut Özcan, “Modernite ve Dünya Düzen(ler)i/ Modernity and World Order(s), Küre Yayınları, Istanbul, 2010.