I am a PhD candidate in History and Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona. My current project examines the making of late Ottoman opposition and the public intellectual through the trajectory and writings of Mehmed Murad Bey, a Dagestani émigré who became a historian, journalist, novelist, teacher of history, bureaucrat, and public figure in the late Ottoman world.

My scholarship bridges history, sociology, and political science through area studies and theoretical inquiry. Combining intellectual, biographical, and transnational approaches, I focus on the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, the Caucasus, and the broader MENA region within comparative and interdisciplinary frameworks that connect these contexts to global debates. I am dedicated to cultivating critical perspectives on the dynamics of the modern era, while pursuing research that traces how intellectuals and political actors navigated the transformations they experienced.

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 while also following courses at EHESS and working at ENS Ulm, and continued my doctoral work at the University of Arizona. Across these places, my work has remained centered on Ottoman and post-Ottoman intellectual life, historiography, politics, literature and print culture, biography and social networks, as well as the relationship between individuals and society, institutions and state structures.

For more details, see my CV.