Biography

Hello! I am an art historian of the visual and material cultures of the medieval Islamic world, with a special interest in Armenian, Byzantine, and Persian-Islamic artistic exchange and cultural encounters in medieval Anatolia, the South Caucasus, and the Eastern Mediterranean. I hold a Ph.D. degree in History of Art from Koç University, Istanbul. I am a Lecturer of medieval Mediterranean and Islamic art in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Michigan where I also am an affiliated faculty at the Digital Studies Institute (DSI).

I was previously a Research Assistant in the Digital Islamic Studies Curriculum (DISC), and a Freer Visiting Graduate Student Fellow in the History of Art at the University of Michigan as well as a Visiting Doctoral Student in History of Art at Bryn Mawr College. I am one of the founding members of Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online where I serve as the Digital Technologies Coordinator, and an assistant editor at the International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA). My research has been supported by various institutions, including the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT)’s Hanfmann Fellowship, SOAS-Getty Connecting Art Histories Research Project, and Koç University’s Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for Late Antique and Byzantine Studies (GABAM).

My dissertation contextualized bronze mirrors within the lives of the inhabitants of medieval Anatolia by considering their various functions in personal adornment and their use in devotional, divinatory, and talismanic practices during the Seljuk period, that is, between the late eleventh and early fourteenth centuries. I am currently working on a book manuscript exploring Seljuk-period bronze mirrors in medieval Anatolia. My research interests also include the collection and display of Islamic art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the history of sports, environmental studies, digital art history, visualization, and game studies.