After completing her Bachelor of Law at Ankara University as an honor student, Dr. Akdogan worked in a top law office in Ankara, the Bar Association of which she is registered as a qualified lawyer. She also studied at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München for a year.

Dr. Akdogan graduated from Advanced LLM in the European and International Business Law programme of Leiden University with cum laude distinction. She pursued her studies as a Jean Monnet scholar, funded by the European Union. During her masters, Dr. Akdogan participated in the European Law Moot Court competition as well as being a member of Honours Academy of Leiden University.

She conducted her PhD research at the University of Groningen in the areas of EU external relations and sustainable development, with her thesis titled Decrypting sustainability in EU Free Trade: Substantive content and the enforceability of the Trade and Sustainable Development chapters. She worked as a lecturer and researcher at the Law Group of Wageningen University and Research (WUR), in the Netherlands. Her research areas focus on EU law and sustainability, the trade and sustainability nexus, and international economic law. She is experienced in teaching EU law and is a member of ICON-S Benelux, the Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment and Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research.

She currently is a post-doc researcher at Utrecht University and conducts research under the NWO-funded research project, CIRCLASH, aiming to solve clashes between circular and legal principles in public procurement.