Dr. Ebru Akcasu
Dr. A. Ebru Akcasu is a historian of the Modern Middle East who specializes in the Ottoman Empire’s engagement with modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Much of her current research rests at the intersection of gender, confession, identity, and modernity, and examines transnational flows of individuals and ideas. She holds a B.A. (SJSU) and two M.A.s (SFSU and SOAS) in History, and a Ph.D. in Near and Middle Eastern Studies (SOAS). Since completing her Ph.D. in 2017, Ebru Akcasu has taught at Charles and Anglo-American universities in Prague.
The research Ebru Akcasu will be carrying out while at the Orient Institute-Istanbul reflects on women’s activism and public visibility from the late Hamidian Era through the early years of the Turkish Republic. In its aim to help reintegrate lost voices into echoes of an Ottoman past, this project will additionally deliberate on how to negotiate historiographical voids with existing narratives about gender in this transformative period. The article that this research will produce will be part of a special issue on life stories from empire to republic she is co-editing for the journal Archiv Orientální (ArOr).