Gülay Çetinkaya Çiftçioğlu is currently a Professor and the Head of the Department of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture at Arkin University of Creative Arts and Design, located in Kyrenia, Mersin 10, Turkey. She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Landscape Architecture from Çukurova University, Turkey, and completed her Ph.D. in Architecture at Saint-Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Russian Federation. Her doctoral research on the reorganization of Köprülü Canyon National Park as a Biosphere Reserve was awarded the UNESCO Man and Biosphere (MAB) Young Scientists Award in 2001.

Throughout her academic career, she has been the recipient of several prestigious international scholarships and fellowships. Between 1997 and 2002, she pursued her Ph.D. with a full scholarship from the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. Between 2005 and 2007, she was awarded the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science – United Nations University (JSPS-UNU) Postdoctoral Fellowship and conducted postdoctoral research at the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) in Japan. Her research during this period focused on natural resource analysis and management, traditional ecological knowledge, and social-ecological landscape systems.

She has held academic and administrative positions at the European University of Lefke, Cyprus Science University, and Arkin University of Creative Arts and Design, serving as department head, dean, senate member, and research center director. Her research interests mostly focus on landscape planning and management, including social-ecological landscape systems, landscape resilience, ecosystem services assessment, adaptive co-management, natural resource analysis and management, protected area and biosphere reserve planning, traditional ecological knowledge, rural development, and ecotourism planning.  She has an extensive record of publications in SCI/SSCI-indexed journals, books, book chapters, and international research projects in these fields.