She graduated from Arnavutköy American Girls' College in 1961. She continued her education in the USA. She completed her undergraduate education at Parsons College Theater Department in Iowa, USA in 1964 and her master's degree in Theater Department at Texas Tech University in 1971 and returned to Turkey. Shw received her doctorate degree from Ankara University DTCF Theater Department in 1979.
After completing her doctorate, she took a break from her academic studies for a while. She wrote theater reviews in magazines and newspapers such as Akis, Kim, Dünya, Yön. In 1982, she started writing theater articles in Cumhuriyet newspaper. She has continued her writings in Cumhuriyet since then.
In 1990, she was among the founders of the Theater Critics Association. In 1993, she started working as a faculty member at the Department of Theater at Istanbul University. She gave lectures on introduction to theater criticism, applied theater criticism, comparative text studies, Turkish theatre, theories of criticism, and postmodernism in theatre. He received the title of associate professor in 1997 and professor in 2006 from Istanbul University. She served as Head of Theater Criticism and Dramaturgy Department between 1997 and 2003. She launched the Refereed Journal of Theater Criticism and Dramaturgy. She retired in 2008. [3] She has been a full-time faculty member at Kadir Has University, Department of Theater since 2013.
Apart from her academic studies, Gürün was the director of the International Istanbul Theater Festival between 1993 and 2013, organized 14 festivals, and was rewarded with the Istanbul Theater Festival Honor Award in 2014.[
She worked as Stage and Performing Arts Director at the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency for a while. Istanbul Universities Theater Festival (2008), Turkish Universities Theater Festival (2009) and the research titled Tradition Opening the Curtain from the Past to the Future (2011), which examines the theater venues of Istanbul, are among the projects she carried out during this duty.
She was the editor-in-chief of Theater Theater magazine for five years. She published books on theater. Theater Writings (2000) and Firebird Semiha Berksoy (2010) and Theater My Life (2015), which is about Yıldız Kenter's life, are her main books.
In 2020, a gift book titled "Essays to Dikmen Gürün" was published as a gift to Gürün, consisting of articles on her work as an academician and Istanbul Theater Festival director, as well as various articles and reviews of his colleagues, students and artists.