Dissertation Projects and PostDoc Projects

Tünde Komori (PhD candidate, Central European University)

My current research focuses on import luxury ceramics in 16-17th-century Ottoman Hungary, such as Chinese porcelain, Iznik ware, and Persian Faience; as well as their trade and distribution. The main points of interest include trading connections of Hungary with the Ottoman Empire as well as the Ottoman Empire with China, especially regarding the trading routes and the type of material culture that travelled among these territories. As a result, I am also interested in what was considered high-end import ceramics in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire and how it is manifested in a remote province and border zone such as Hungary. My research method is primarily the standard archaeology-based survey of the material culture, but for a better understanding of the context, a multidisciplinary approach is applied, mainly including the historical and art historical study of the material and its context, including the analysis of relevant written sources.

Özlem Sultan Çolak (PhD candidate, University of Vienna)

This project investigates the migration of Ottoman subjects—particularly Armenians and Sephardic Jews—to Argentina and other parts of Latin America from the 18th to the 20th century. It explores how these communities constructed collective identities and engaged in memory practices through institutions such as museums, monuments, and commemorative rituals. By examining archival documents, local publications, and community sources, the research traces how migrants connected their Ottoman past with their new lives in Latin America and contributed to shaping both their diasporic identities and Argentine national narratives.

Alptuğ Güney (PhD candidate, University of Vienna)

Das Promotionsvorhaben wird im Rahmen des an der Universität Hamburg seit April 2017 laufenden von der Volkswagenstiftung finanzierten Projektes “HerCoRe–Hermeneutic and Computer based Analysis of Reliability, Consistency and Vagueness in historical text -Illustrated through two main works of Dimitrie Cantemir”* durchgeführt und beschäftigt sich mit der historiographischen und hermeneutischen Analyse des Werkes „Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches” von Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723). Ziel des Projektes ist es, einerseits die Entstehung und Bedeutung einer osmanischen Geschichte, die im Zeitalter der frühen Aufklärung verfasst wurde, zu untersuchen. Im Vordergrund steht hierbei die detaillierte Analyse des Werkes, die Identifikation der zugrundeliegenden Quellen sowie das Nachzeichnen der historiographischen Arbeitsweise Cantemirs. Die Studie geht von der Annahme aus, dass Cantemirs Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches sowohl in der osmanischen als auch europäischen historiographischen Tradition eine bis heute kaum angemessen gewürdigte Sonderstellung zukommt. Das Projekt wird zudem unter Hinzuziehung bisher unberücksichtigter Archivquellen den Werdegang Dimitri Cantemirs als Gelehrten in osmanischen Diensten in den Jahren 1687 bis 1710 nachzeichnen und sein soziales Umfeld genauer beleuchten. 

János Galamb (PhD candidate, Central European University)

In his PhD research at CEU, János Galamb taps into his former research and expands the scope to a later historical period, investigating the developments of hadith literature in the late medieval and early modern eras, especially in the Mamluk and Ottoman contexts.

Tobias Völker (PhD candidate, University of Hamburg, University of Vienna)

My doctoral project examines the writings and career of the German Orientalist and diplomat Andreas David Mordtmann (1811-1879) who went to Istanbul in 1845 as diplomatic representative of the Hanseatic Cities, and in 1860 entered Ottoman state service, thereby becoming directly engaged in the late Ottoman reform process while continuously commenting on Ottoman politics as a journalist and academic. Applying the methodological and interpretative framework of transcultural studies, the project traces Mordtmann´s overlapping and often conflicting roles as diplomat, scholar, journalist and Ottoman civil servant through an analysis of his descriptions of the actors and policies of the Tanzimat in the context of inner-Ottoman as well as European Orientalist debates. Uncovering the mental and material worlds of this intellectual with multiple cultural, professional and political affiliations, the project aims to explore the dynamics and ambiguities of 19th century Orientalist knowledge production in a transcultural environment.

Hakan Yerebakan (PhD candidate, Central European University)

Within the framework of his doctoral research project at the Department of Historical Studies, Hakan Yerebakan wants to widen the scope of his previous research, building upon his earlier findings. He is interested in the questions of why and how the learned elite in the urban centres of the core regions of the Ottoman Empire used derision and laughter as ways to cope with rapid social transformations. The sources he intends to analyse for his project include books of jokes (letâifnâme), parody poetry (hezl), and invective poetry (hicv).

Aynur Gülen (PhD candidate, University of Vienna)

Das Dissertationsprojekt besteht aus zwei Teilen und konzentriert sich in einem ersten Teil auf die Bearbeitung von vier Gedichtsammlungen in der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek mit den Signaturen A. F. 343, A. F. 485, Mxt. 450 und Mxt. 451. Ausgehend vom Gesamtinhalt dieser vier Gedichtsammlungen wird es sich in einem zweiten theoretischen Teil mit den poetischen Konventionen der osmanischen Dīvān-Poesie des 16. und teilweise des 17. Jahrhunderts befassen. Aus allen vier Gedichtsammlungen sollen in der osmanischen Literaturgeschichte nicht bekannte Dichter erforscht und ihre Dichtung untersucht und in Edition vorgelegt werden.  Das Hauptaugenmerk wird dabei auf der Gedichtsammlung A. F. 343 liegen. Denn diese enthält mindestens 71 Gedichte des Kompilators und möglicherweise Handschriftenbesitzer Muḥibbī aus İlbaṣān. Der Corpus des geplanten Dissertationsprojekts wird sich aus den in diesen vier Gedichtsammlungen vorkommenden bisher nicht edierten Gedichten in der Form des lyrischen Gedichts nicht bekannter osmanischer Dichter des 15., 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts zusammenstellen. Um ausgehend vom Gesamtinhalt der Gedichtsammlungen Schlussfolgerungen und/oder Hypothesen über poetische Konventionen aufstellen zu können, wird unter Bezugnahme auf Primär- sowie Sekundärquellen auf folgende Fragen eingegangen: Was sind die grundlegenden Besonderheiten der osmanischen Poesiekonventionen des 16. Jahrhunderts? Spiegeln die in den Gedichtsammlungen aufgenommenen Gedichte den Poesiekanon der damaligen Zeit oder nur den Poesiegeschmack bestimmter Kompilatoren wider? Können Hypothesen über die poetischen Ambitionen bzw. Intentionen der nicht bekannten Dichter in den vier Gedichtsammlungen formuliert werden?

Cankat Kaplan (PhD candidate, Central European University)

As a PhD candidate at the Department of Historical Studies at CEU, Cankat’s proposed dissertation deals with the Bayrami-Malami Sufi order of the long sixteenth century that marks unprecedented oppression against Sufis in the Ottoman lands. Sufis, especially Bayrami-Malami Sufis, were persecuted, their shaykhs were subject to oppression. Cankat focuses on the tension between Sufis, scholars, and the sultans and traces the debates that constructed the definitions of heresy versus piety in the sixteenth century. In addition to his dissertation topic, Cankat’s main research interests include the entangled history of esotericism in the late medieval and early modern period, intellectual networks of the post-Mongol world, Ottoman historiography, as well as the history of Sufism.

Melike Aysu Akcan (PhD candidate, University of Vienna)

The project investigates the letter-collection of Lāmiʿī Çelebi (b. 1472-d.1532), who is primarily known as an important litterateur and as a ṣūfī, a member of Naḳşibendiyye order. This study aims to locate Lāmiʿī Çelebi’s letter-collection in a concept that allows to scrutinize his correspondences as a source of writer’s world; by keeping in mind that the letter-writing culture is intertwined with the specific elements of form and content, and shared conventional, collective and artful peculiarities of the Ottoman literary culture. The research aims to show that a textual and literary genre - i.e., letter-writing - should also be evaluated as a textual representation of the personal experiences and the self. The study will also be accompanied by the technologies of Digital Humanities that will allow optimal use of the letter-collection.

Ayşe Dilsiz Hartmuth (PhD candidate, University of Vienna)

Since the mid-1990s, Heritage Studies have become a field of expertise and research of its own. This is mainly because the relationship between identity and tangible and intangible heritage began to be regarded as crucial in the understanding of societies. My dissertation project will demonstrate that, in Turkey as well, narratives of cultural heritage have adapted in accordance with the political agendas and challenges, and often so in a very pragmatic way. Following the changing perspectives towards cultural heritage and uses of the past from the establishment of the Turkish republic to the present day, I aim to explore how values and a sense of identity were renegotiated in each period.

Julia Fröhlich-Siegl (PostDoc, University of Vienna)

Focusing on late / post-Ottoman refugee phenomena in the Aegean region (1896-1922), this project analyses the nexus between social and physical space, authoritarian structures, refugee agency, as well as collective memory production in Greek and Turkish (semi-)public spaces. Within the context of the shifting Aegean borderland, the concepts of ‘refugeedom’  and ‘borderland’ serve as the anchor point which allows for an in-depth discussion of the connection between (social / physical) space and human (inter-)action, individual refugee agency and negotiations of power structures, as well as instances of refugee-state interaction. Furthermore, taking on a long-term perspective, this project aims to firstly, trace the impact of refugee memory and trauma on contemporary memory production and secondly, identify manifestations of tangible memory and trauma in Greece, especially Crete, and Turkey. In short, the project is concerned with describing the interplay between moving individuals, shifting social spaces, physical and social borderland zones, hegemonic structures, and memory construction.

Onur İnal (PostDoc, University of Vienna)

The project analyzes the connection between modernization, nation-building, environment, and technology in the early republican period of Turkey and to shed light on the contested national meanings invested in nature, and in return, exploring the influence of nature on the formation of Turkish national identity. By examining the interactions among nation, nature, culture, and technology historically, it aims to discuss and illustrate the ways in which the natural landscape of Anatolia was appropriated, controlled, regularized, and tamed through technological and scientific means in the so-called ‘Kemalist Period’ between the years 1923 and 1950. It uses the methodological and interpretative tools of environmental history to show how analyzing the many relationships between state and society, between power and nature, between environmental change and economic change, and between humans and non-humans offers a holistically fresh perspective on the transformation of nature in the founding years of Turkey. In short, the proposed project, while documenting the interplay among state, society, nature, technology, and culture, it aims to construct a synchronous history of nation and nature in Turkey through the prism of environmental history.