Zehra Çolak is a postdoctoral researcher on a Dutch Research Council (NWO) project titled Re/Presenting Europe: Popular Representations of Diversity and Belonging. Her work examines how ethnically and racially minoritized youth experience and negotiate belonging across secondary schools and community-based youth organizations. Drawing on qualitative and interdisciplinary approaches, she explores alternative and imaginative practices of belonging that inform justice-oriented pedagogies across learning contexts (Çolak et al., 2026). 

During her PhD at KU Leuven (Belgium), her research analyzed institutional and everyday processes of exclusion and racialization in higher education, highlighting how racialized young people navigate exclusionary spaces by drawing on their community cultural wealth (Çolak, 2025). She recently co-edited a special issue on anti-racism in education, bringing together critical interdisciplinary and methodological perspectives on anti-racist praxis across educational levels (Mouhib & Çolak, 2026). 

Zehra has taught courses on pedagogy, academic writing, cultural diversity and inclusion at the Graduate School of Teaching and the Department of Education and Pedagogy, and has supervised master's thesis students. She has also developed and coordinated courses for PhD candidates on qualitative methods and critical perspectives in education through the Interuniversity Centre for Educational Sciences (ICO). She was recently awarded an Insights into Educational Innovation grant to develop a podcast intervention aimed at strengthening belonging and diversity competencies in higher education.

In addition to her research and teaching, Zehra is actively involved in academic service and science communication. She served for five years as co-coordinator of the Standing Committee on Education and Social Inequality, fostering international collaboration among scholars working on education and inequality. She is currently an Editorial Board Member of Ethnic and Racial Studies. She also co-developed the podcast Joy in Academia, which explores the academic journeys of scholars from racialized backgrounds; the project received funding from Migration and Societal Change.