Zeynep Yıldız received her undergraduate education between 2016 and 2020 through the dual diploma program between Middle East Technical University (METU) and the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, majoring in English Language Teaching and Liberal Arts and Sciences. She graduated as the top-ranked student in her department and with magna cum laude honors. She completed her MA in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University between 2021 and 2024 on a full merit-based scholarship. Since 2025, she has been a PhD student in the Curriculum and Instruction program at İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University on a full merit-based scholarship.

Her MA thesis examined high school English textbooks in terms of intercultural communicative competence. Her ongoing doctoral research focuses on the academic and sociocultural transition processes of international students in Türkiye and the development of a curriculum-based support model for these processes.

Her research interests include educational policy, curriculum studies, K-12 and higher education, migration and international student mobility, social policy, public policy, foreign policy, radicalization, digital extremism, gender and equality, intercultural communication, and sociocultural adaptation.