From the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the caliphal status and the legitimacy of the Ottoman sultans were constantly and increasingly challenged. One of the most effective and powerful tools that they utilized in order to strengthen their diminishing image in the eyes of their subjects was the re-appropriation of sacred places, either by…[Read more]

“Foreword.” YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies 2 (2020): 3

The factors behind the rise of Islamism in Turkey remain the subject of intense scholarly debate. There are remarkable relationships between the rise of Islamism and preceding changes in population dynamics in Turkey. Rapid urbanization and large-scale migration of Kurds and other ethnic minorities from the east of the county to major cities in…[Read more]

Unofficial Description: In Arab American studies, it’s long been understood that Syrian immigrants became “legally white” in 1915’s George Dow v United States. This access to whiteness was critical in getting access to US citizenship. However, US laws governing Syrian racial status also bore implications beyond the US context. Starting with Dow…[Read more]

“Lives in Turkish” is an ongoing research project held at Boğaziçi University Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies. We trace the journey of life-writing in Turkish, collect metadata and visuals about biographical publications and biography subjects introduced to the Turkish reader since the early 1800s. Our aim is to propose a c…[Read more]

Papers focusing on the urban environmental history of fires are invited for a panel to be submitted to
the European Society for Environmental History conference, which will be held at the
University of Bristol in July 2021.

Focusing on the use and abuse in the study of Byzantine archaeology and Urbanism of the idea of the “Invisible Cities” as introduced in literature by Italo Calvino, this article attempts to set a framework for understanding Byzantine cities within clear and scientifically defined analytical categories as part of a modernist agenda. At the same tim…[Read more]

This real-life memoir chronicles the journey of Arousiag Magarian over a four year period as she struggles to survive during the Armenian Genocide (1915-1919). Originally written in a small notebook in Armenian, the authors (Arpi Poladian and Troy E. Spier) have translated and prepared for the reader a version in literary English that hopes to…[Read more]

Rising on the shoulders of the İstanbul Araştırmaları Yıllığı / Annual of Istanbul Studies, the relaunched YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies is now peer-reviewed. Thanks to a reformed advisory board, whose expertise covers all periods and disciplines in the study of Istanbul’s past and present, the journal now sets a much higher academic…[Read more]

This chapter argues that the textual and archaeological evidence for imperial involvement in the Corinthia provides faint traces of what Jas Elsner has called “internal friction” in the manifestation of imperial and Corinthian authority in the region.

A short paper on legacy data, flow, and time in archaeology based on my experiences at Polis on Cyprus.

2019’da yayımlanan “Nature’s ‘Cosmopolis’: Villagers, Engineers, and Animals along Terkos Waterworks in Late Nineteenth-Century Istanbul.” In The Seeds of Power: Explorations in the Environmental History of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Onur Inal and Yavuz Köse, 155-183 (Winwick: The White Horse Press, 2019) makalemin, kısaltılarak Türkçe’ye çev…[Read more]