The Karpat Center provides generous summer funding to PhD students in History whose research interests are within the scope of Turkish Studies. Fellows are selected and notified at the time of admission to the PhD program. Recipients of this award are encouraged to take Turkish language classes, but not required to do so.
For further information see Department of History Funding.
Karpat Center Turkish Studies Summer Fellows
Dane Smith, Karpat Center Turkish Studies Summer Fellow (2023-25)
My research focuses on ethnicity, religious identity, race, and other conceptions of difference in Byzantium. I am particularly interested in the historical anthropology and how conceptions of human difference manifested in state and popular actions. On the side I am interested in how the European Middle Ages are depicted in modern media and the use of history by political actors.
Berke Çetinkaya, Karpat Center Turkish Studies Summer Fellow (2024-26)
My previous research has focused on ideology and practice on the Byzantine-Islamic frontier, concentrating on historiography, geographical imagination and discourse, and the administration of the frontier regions between the seventh and eleventh centuries. In my PhD, I focus on the intellectual and social history of the Middle Byzantine period. I am particularly interested in understanding the significance of social capital and networks in the accumulation of wealth among Byzantine literati. I am also working on a side project that focuses on the teaching and learning of Byzantine history in late Ottoman and Republican Era Istanbul.