Professor Sedat Gümüş received his PhD from the Department of Educational Administration at Michigan State University, the United States, in 2012. After graduation, he worked at several institutions in Turkey and at Aarhus University in Denmark. He also served as a visiting scholar at the University of Georgia, the United States, from July 2015 to June 2016. Professor Gümüş joined The Education University of Hong Kong in 2021 as an Associate Professor and was Associate Head for Research and International Relations at the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership (EPL). He is currently serving as Associate Head (Internationalisation and Community Engagement) at EPL and Acting Director of The Joseph Lau Luen Hung Charitable Trust Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change (APCLC).
Professor Gümüş has over a decade of experience in educational leadership research in various contexts and has formed extensive networks with scholars and practitioners worldwide. He has co-edited one academic book and published over 70 journal papers and book chapters. His works have been featured in leading educational journals, such as Educational Administration Quarterly, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Management Administration and Leadership, Educational Review, European Journal of Education, Higher Education, International Journal of Educational Research, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, and Teaching and Teacher Education.
Among his involvement in various international research projects, Professor Gümüş has led two significant projects as Principal Investigator. He recently completed a project on the effects of school leadership on student outcomes, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation, Denmark, and is currently leading a GRF project focusing on socially just instructional leadership in three different national contexts. As Co-Investigator, he is also currently involved in a donation project from The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, aiming to support the sustainable development of Hong Kong school leaders to lead future-ready, inclusive schools.
Professor Gümüş received the prestigious Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award 2025 from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, and was named among Stanford University’s Top 2% Scientists in 2024. In 2025, he ranked 15th globally in leadership research by ScholarGPS among more than 50,000 scholars ranked in the topic based on productivity, impact, and quality in the prior five years. He has also been invited as a speaker to conferences and seminars in countries around the world, including Chile, China, Denmark, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Turkey, the UAE, and the United States.