Esra Şahin Burat is an Associate Professor of Architectural Internationalization Demonstration School of SEU. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from Middle East Technical University, Master of Architecture from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. She previously taught at University of Pennsylvania and Mersin University, where she also served as the department chair. She is a recipient of the SOM Foundation's Travel Fellowship and the ACSA Steel Design Award for Excellence among other awards.

Her areas of interest include architectural theory and design, particularly theories of nature, habitation and representation in architecture, and the relationship between architecture and the natural/cultural environment. As a registered architect she participated in urban renewal projects for archeological sites, supervised architectural survey teams at the archeological excavations of Soli Pompeiopolis, and served as the vice president of the Mersin Chamber of Architects. She recently completed an interdisciplinary research project on shelter design for extreme climates led by the University of Bath. Her recent publications have focused on the ecological imagination of Le Corbusier’s housing projects, the reception of the notion of symmetria in architectural theory, and on the anthropological dimensions of Semper’s tectonics (forthcoming).