She specializes in political violence and terrorism with a regional concentration in Middle East and South Asia. Substantively, she focuses on suicide terrorism and perpetrators of terrorism, and studies questions such as what makes suicide terrorism an effective strategy, what motivates suicide bombers and how various organizational strategies determine the organizational choice of suicide terrorism. Dr. Alakoc’s current work examines the lethality of suicide attacks using newly collected data, and motivations of suicide bombers using existing interviews with failed suicide bombers. She enjoys teaching courses on international relations and security, foreign policy analysis, comparative politics, and research methods.