Soli Özel, lisans eğitimini 1981 yılında Bennington College’da tamamlamış ve ekonomi eğitimi almıştır. 1983 yılında ise John Hopkins Üniversitesi Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü’nden master dalında mezun olmuştur. Özel, Kadir Has Üniversitesi Uluslararası İlişkiler bölümünde tam zamanlı ders vermektedir. Georgetown, Harvard, Tufts ve çeşitli Amerikan Üniversitelerinde konuk öğretim üyeliği yapmış, Santa Cruz, SAIS, Washington Üniversitesi, İbrani Üniversitesi’nde dersler vermiştir. Oxford ve Avrupa Birliği Stratejik Çalışmalar Enstitüsü üyeliğinin yanı sıra Harvard Üniversitesi Kennedy Hükümet Okulu’nda Diplomasi Programı Fisher Family Üyesi’dir. 2013 ilkbaharında ise Keyman üyeliği ve Northwestern Üniversitesi’nde konuk öğretim üyeliği yapmıştır. 2015 – 2017 yılları arasında Berlin’deki Robert Bosch Akademisi’nde Richard von Weizsacker üyesi olmuştur. Paris’teki Institut Montaigne’de uluslararası ilişkiler programında çalışmalar sürdürmüştür.
Alman Marshall Fon’unun web sitesi “ON Turkey” e düzenli katkı sağlamaktadır. Yazıları Internationale Politik, Journal of Democracy, Foreign Policy, International Security, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, The Guardian ve Bitterlemons-International’da yayımlanmaktadır. İtalyan l’Espresso dergisine de düzenli yazı yazmaktadır.
Özel, ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations) üyesidir.

Soli Özel holds a BA in Economics from Benningon College (1981) and an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS-1983). Mr. Özel was a Bernstein Fellow at the Schell Center for Human Rights at Yale Law School and a visiting lecturer in the Political Science Department of Yale in the Spring of 2019. He is a senior lecturer at Kadir Has University. He has been a columnist at Habertürk and Sabah newspapers and currently writes for two internet portals, T24 and DuvarEnglish. He held fellowships at Oxford, the EU Institute of Strategic Studies and was a Fisher Family Fellow of the “Future of Diplomacy Program” at the Belfer Center of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He taught at SAIS, University of Washington, Northwestern University and Hebrew University. He was a Richard von Weizsacker fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin between 2015-2017 and a visiting fellow at Institut Montaigne in Paris in 2018.

Most recently he published
With Gökçe Uçar
“The Economics of Turkey-Russia Relations”, EDAM Report for Chrest Foundation on
Turkey-Russia Relations; (I was also the editor of the project)
“At the End of the Day, Where Will Turkey Stand?” for Istituto Affari Internazionali
With Selin Nasi, “How the Syrian Civil War Shifted the Balance of Power in
Turkish–Israeli Relations” in Contemporary Israeli–Turkish Relations in Comparative
Perspective, by Ayşegül Sever and Orna Almog, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019
With Evrim Görmüş, “US Policies Adrift in a Levant in Turmoil” Uluslararası İlişkiler,
Vol.15, Number: 60, 2018, s. 135-150
“The Transatlantic Drift and the Waning of Turkey’s ‘Strategic Westernness’ for
Heinrich Böll Stiftung, co-authored POLITICS OF POPULISM: POWER AND PROTEST IN
THE GLOBAL AGE” with Evren Balta
“The Kurds in the Middle East” with Arzu Yılmaz, in SIPRI Yearbook 2017
He is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
He is the co-author of “Elite 0rigins of Democracy and Development” to be published February 2024 by Routledge with Michael T. Rock