Biographical Information:
I am a historian of Islamic art and architecture, specializing in late-Ottoman visual and material cultures. My research explores how modern forms of sovereignty and identity were fashioned through emerging representational technologies, architectural practices, and landscape interventions. My first monograph traces the centurial transformation of Yıldız—the last Ottoman palace in Istanbul—between the 1790s and 1910s. It examines how photography, prefabrication, and artificial landscapes became tools of imperial self-fashioning, while also highlighting the significant roles of women in the Ottoman court and non-courtly contributors in shaping the period’s architectural and garden histories.
My current project investigates historical conceptions of Anatolia and the visual and institutional shifts that accompanied the transition from empire to republic. Focusing on the representation of “Ottoman” versus “Turkish” Anatolia, I analyze the formation of historical and cultural institutions through archaeological excavations, museum practices, ethnographic studies, and state-commissioned artistic surveys. This research builds on the 2018 exhibition Ottoman Arcadia: The Hamidian Expedition to the Land of Tribal Roots (1886), which I co-curated with Ahmet A. Ersoy (Boğaziçi University) and Bahattin Öztuncay (MEŞHER) at ANAMED, and includes work on the modernist photographer Yıldız Moran, whose Anatolian landscapes offer a lens into mid-century visual constructions of national identity, while also reflecting her feminist perspective and commitment to fine-tuning her photographic craft beyond the bounds of nationalist ideology.
In 2023, I co-curated an exhibition based on Greek and Ottoman embroideries from the Fitzwilliam Museum’s collection—once belonging to George de Menasce of Alexandria. This project explores intersections between classical archaeology, textile collecting, and the formation of heritage narratives and national identities in the Eastern Mediterranean.
I maintain a sustained interest in the history of Islamic art collecting, particularly in the 19th-century Ottoman and Egyptian contexts. My research examines how collecting was historically intertwined with historiography, manuscript cultures, and the development of global scholarly and museum networks.
Prior to joining Rutgers University, I held positions at the University of Cambridge as the Fari Sayeed Visiting Fellow in Islamic Art and a postdoctoral research associate at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies. My work has been supported by Dumbarton Oaks, ANAMED, and the Leverhulme Trust.
Undergraduate Classes Taught:
Islamic Art Surveys
Global Art Surveys
Graduate Classes Taught:
Histories of Collecting
Orientalism and Post-Orientalism
Selected Publications:
Books:
The Accidental Palace: Nineteenth-Century Sultans and the Making of Yıldız, 1795-1909 (Penn State Press, 2023.
Co-authored with A. Hilâl Uğurlu. Letters and Gifts in the Harems of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul (Cambridge University Press, The History of Constantinople Series, 2025, forthcoming).
---. Architecture and Interiors of the Harems in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul (Cambridge University Press, The History of Constantinople Series, 2025, forthcoming).
Book chapters:
“Inwards and Outwards: Mazhar Şevket İpşiroğlu, Sabahattin Eyüboğlu, and the Anatolian Horizons of Turkish Art Historiography,” in the Festschift for Gülru Necipoğlu (Brill, 2026, forthcoming).
“The Surveyor’s Gaze: Reconsidering Nineteenth-Century Modalities in Ottoman Painting,” in Survey Practices and Landscape Photography across the Globe, eds. Erin Hyde Nolan and Sophie Junge (London: Routledge, 2022), 259-280.
“Ottoman Horticulture after the Tulip Era: Botanizing Consuls, Garden Diplomacy, and the First Foreign Head-Gardener,” in Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Yota Batsaki, Sarah Burke Cahalan, and Anatole Tchikine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 305-336.
Co-authored with Melis Taner and Faik Gür, “From Empires Past to Nation State: Figurative Public Statues in Istanbul,” in Public Statues Across Time and Cultures, ed. Christopher Dickenson (New York, NY: Routledge, 2021).
Articles:
“‘Professor Wace’s Turkish Sampler’: Ottoman Women Embroiderers and Continental Collectors of Woven Archaeologies,” The Textile Museum Journal 50 ( 2023): 72-90.
“Angels of the Angels”: Abdüllatif Subhi’s Coins, Egypt, and History,” in Muqarnas 39 (November 2022): 193-225.
“Hakky-Bey and His Journal, Le Miroir de l’Art Musulman, or, Mir’āt-ı ṣanāyi‘-ī islāmiye, 1898,” in Muqarnas 31 (November, 2014): 277–306.
Other publications:
“Yıldız Moran and the Archive of Rejection,” in the exhibition catalogue, Yıldız Moran: Kindness of the Shadow (November-December, 2022), Ankara: Galeri Nev Publications, 2022, 17-27.
“‘Every Image is a Thought: Nineteenth-Century Gift-Albums and the Hamidian Visual Archive,” in Abdülhamid II’s Gift-Albums to Otto von Bismarck (Istanbul: Koç University Press, 2018), 64-83.
Selected fellowships, awards and distinctions:
Fellow, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Harvard University 2024-25
Barakat Trust Publication Grant 2024-25
Peter E. Palmquist Memorial Fund for Historical Photographic Research 2024
Harvard-Radcliffe Institute Exploratory Research Seminar (with Prof. C. Kafadar) 2023-24
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Cambridge, UK. 2019-20
Curated exhibitions:
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK. Exhibition co-curator with Carol Humphreys (The Fitzwilliam) for Threaded Archaeologies:
Mediterranean Embroideries at the Fitzwilliam Museum (April, 2023)
Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED), Istanbul. Exhibition Co-curator with Ahmet Ersoy (Boğaziçi University) for Ottoman Arcadia: The Hamidian Expedition to the Land of Tribal Roots, 1886 (April, 2018-January, 2019)