Yavuz is a professor of political science in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Utah. In fall 2026, he will be a visiting scholar at CAIS, advancing research on Islamic social and political movements and Turkish foreign policy. His current projects examine: (1) the vernacularization of Islam across shifting socio-political contexts; (2) the drivers, dynamics, and regional consequences of Turkey’s neo-Ottoman (Islamicized) foreign policy; and (3) how religious ideas travel from canon to commons—how doctrine becomes practice—through the formation of moral economies, authority claims, and collective identities. His work engages concepts such as vernacularization, strategic autonomy, civilizational imaginaries, and state–society mediation.