Işılay Gürsu graduated from Boğaziçi University’s Tourism Administration department, and she completed her MA studies at Koç University’s ‘Anatolian Civilizations and Cultural Heritage Management’ programme. She received her PhD in Cultural Heritage Management from IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca, Italy in 2013.

She joined the BIAA upon completion of her PhD. For the first two years of her appointment, she worked on improving the presentation and interpretation of the ancient site of Aspendos and the ancient region of Pisidia. She was the Co-Investigator of the research project ‘Living Amid the Ruins: Archaeological Sites as Hubs of Sustainable Development in Southwest Turkey’, which received funding from the British Academy’s Sustainable Development Programme in December 2016. She was involved in drafting the SARAT (Safeguarding Archaeological Assets of Turkey) project application, and worked as part of the project, between 2017-2020. SARAT won the 2020 Europa Nostra Award in the category Education, Training and Awareness-Raising.