In her research and teaching, Seçil adopts a cross-disciplinary approach that integrates methods and theories from visual culture, environmental history, anthropology, urban geography, and Middle East Studies with architectural history and theory. She teaches lectures and seminars such as “Modern and Contemporary Global Architectural History,” “Cold War Space,” “Environmental Design and the Socio-Cultural Context,” and “Scales of Architecture,” where students explore global architectural history and design thinking across various media—including photographs, films, maps, and drawings—and their connections, paying close attention to genres in historiography and the materiality (or lack thereof) of archives. These courses are grounded in environmental studies literature, particularly Anthropocene discourse and its own critiques (Capitalocene and Plantationocene), connecting ecological design debates in the Global North with environmental justice movements and practices from the Global South. 

Before joining the University of Minnesota, Seçil was an Emerging Scholar Fellow at the University of Houston’s College of Design, where she had the opportunity to situate her research and teaching within the historical geography of the Gulf Coast. She is currently honored to continually learn from Mississippi’s wisdom flowing into the Gulf.