Historian of the late Ottoman Empire.
I work on late Ottoman intellectual history, biography, journalism, historical writing, and the making of public intellectual life in the nineteenth century.
I am a PhD candidate in History and Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona. My current project examines the life and writings of Mehmed Murad Bey, a Dagestani émigré who became a historian, journalist, novelist, teacher of history, and public figure in late Ottoman Istanbul.
My academic training has taken me through Istanbul, Paris, and Tucson. I received my BA in History from Boğaziçi University, studied political science at Sciences Po, completed an MA at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris, and continued my doctoral work at the University of Arizona. Across these places, my work has remained centered on Ottoman intellectual life, historical writing, biography, and the relationship between texts, institutions, and public life.
This website brings together my research, teaching, publications, presentations, CV, and public writing. My Blog is a separate space for essays, notes, videos, podcasts, and fragments.
Beyond academia
Moving from Istanbul and Paris to Arizona changed my sense of landscape. Coming from dense urban worlds into the desert, mountains, canyons, and open horizons of the American Southwest made hiking, climbing, and outdoor life part of how I think and live.
I am also interested in creative writing and in the imaginative possibilities of literature. I return often to Italo Calvino and Oğuz Atay, writers whose work opens strange passages between form, memory, irony, and self-reflection.
Diversions is where I will collect non-academic writing, images, and other materials.