Bihter Esener

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. in History of Art from Koç University, Istanbul. I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University. My faculty spotlight can be read here.

Before joining Northwestern, I taught in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Michigan, where I offered courses ranging from the Art and Architecture of the Mediterranean World to specialized seminars such as Istanbul Through the Ages, Sports and Art in the Middle Ages, and Medievalism in Video Games. I also held an affiliated faculty position with the Digital Studies Institute (DSI). As a founding member of Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, I served as Director of Digital Technologies from 2020 to 2025, and was Assistant Editor at the International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA) from 2022 to 2025.

My research has been supported by various grants and institutions, including the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT)’s Hanfmann Fellowship, SOAS-Getty Connecting Art Histories Research Project, Koç University’s Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for Late Antique and Byzantine Studies (GABAM), and The Digital Islamic Studies Curriculum (DISC) at the University of Michigan via a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. My current book project contextualizes 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, i.e., between the late eleventh and early fourteenth centuries.