Ayse Caglar was Research Group Leader holding a Minerva Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Since February 2011 she obtains a chair at the University of Vienna.

Previously she was University Professor at the Central European University, Budapest. She obtained a Ph.D. in Anthropology from McGill University, Montreal, Canada in 1995 and completed her Habilitation in Anthropology and Sociology at the Free University Berlin "Encountering the State in Migration-Driven Transnational Social Fields: Turkish Immigrants in Europe" in 2004. Past positions include a guest professorship at the Institute für Höhere Studien, Viennna.

Ayse Caglar is vice president of the International Institute of Sociology and member of the Advisory Board of the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in Social Science, Budapest, Vienna, and a panel member for the evaluation of European Research Council Starting Grants.