Yilmaz was awarded his B.A. from the Department of History/Archaeology and History of Art as a double major at Koç University in 2018. While at Koç, he also completed the “Gender Studies Certificate Program.” Supported by a grant from the TUBITAK Graduate Scholarship Program, he received his M.A. in History from Boğaziçi University in 2021. In his master's thesis, entitled “Interpreting Gender in Turkish Archaeology and Ancient History: A Critical Discourse Analysis,” he questions how and why particular academic discourses are produced when Turkish archaeologists and ancient historians interpret gender in the past. Yilmaz's research interests include theoretical/methodological approaches to gender in archaeology, ancient masculinities, linguistic constructions of archaeological discourses, and socio-politics of the past. Regionally, he is focused on the history and archaeology of the ancient Near East. He has done fieldwork with Tell Atchana (Alalakh) Excavations (2015-2018) and Boğaziçi University’s Tarsus-Gözlükule archaeological project (2019-).