36 Year Experience in Linguistics

She worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics, Hacettepe University, Turkey from 1979 to 1982. She was advisor to the Turkish Ministry of Education, Secondary and Higher Education in the years between 1982-1987. During that same period, she was the coordinator of Foreign Language Instruction and Chair of Department of Department of Foreign Language Teacher Training at Gazi University, Turkey.

Balım was a member of the country representative teams for the OECD, UNESCO and UN and national coordinator of UNESCO- CODIESEE for Turkey (1984 – 1987). She was the founder and coordinator of the Research Group on Central Asia and the Caucasus, University of Manchester, UK (1993 – 2004). She lived in the United Kingdom and was chair of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Manchester.
In 2004, she transferred to Indiana University as director of the Center for the Languages of the Central Asian Region (CeLCAR).

She has lectured at Indiana University since 2005 as a senior lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. She was promoted to senior lecturer for the Center for the Study of the Middle East (CSME) in 2011. She is also an affiliated faculty member of the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center, Russian and East European Institute, and Islamic Studies Program at Indiana University. She is a faculty member of the West European Center at the university.

Balım is the co-author of eight books about the Turkic-language speaking people of the Central Asian Republics and their relations with Turkey, Meskhetian Turks, Quick Language Course, and Turkey’s Political, Economic and Social Challenges.  

She is currently working on editing two special editions of the Women Studies International Forum on Grounding Cosmopolitanism and Authority and Feminism in the Middle East. Balim also is co-authoring a book on Turkish Literature and World Literature in Translation for K-12 teachers of the International Baccalaureate.