İstanΠόλις
Core Research Group
Christine Philliou
Christine Philliou, Professor in the Department of History at University of California Berkeley and Director of the Modern Greek/Hellenic Studies and Turkish, Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies (TOPOS) programs there, specializes in the connected histories of the Balkans and Middle East since the 17th century, focusing particularly on the emergence of the Greek and Turkish nation-states out of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. She has worked, and is interested more broadly in comparative empires and in interfaces between cultures and histories in Europe and the Middle East. Her books, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution (2011), and Turkey: A Past Against History (2021), have been translated into both Greek and Turkish, and she has published widely in scholarly journals as well as in broader forums such as PublicBooks and Jadaliyya.

Firuzan Melike Sümertaş
Firuzan Melike Sümertaş is currently a lecturer in the Department of History at University of California Berkeley and Assist. Prof. in the Department of Interior Design at Istanbul Kent University. Her research focuses on the urban/architectural/visual culture of the late Ottoman Empire and its capital city Istanbul, with a particular interest in the Greek-Orthodox community. She holds a PhD. in History from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul and B.Arch and M.A degrees from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Department of Architecture, and Program in Architectural History. Besides IstanΠόλις, she collaborates with Namık Erkal, Haris Theodorelis Rigas and ANAMED at Koç University, Istanbul under the project entitled “Phanariot Materialities.”

Panagiotis Poulos
Panagiotis C. Poulos is Assistant Professor in Ethnomusicology at the Department of Music Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He studied ethnomusicology with a focus on the musical traditions of the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), where he also completed his doctoral dissertation on Ottoman classical music, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. His research centers on the musical traditions of the Islamic world, the cultural history of late Ottoman and Turkish music and arts, and the history of everyday life in Ottoman cities. Panagiotis C. Poulos is one of the founding members of the research team sonorCities, which has been funded by the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation for the project Learning Culture through City Soundscapes. He is co-editor of Ottoman Intimacies, Balkan Musical Realities (2013, Finnish Institute at Athens) and author of Music in the Islamic World: Sources, Perspectives, Practices (e-book, 2015, Hellenic Academic Libraries Link). In 2013 he was awarded an honorable mention Ömer Lütfi Barkan Award by the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association for his article Rethinking Orality in Turkish Classical Music: A Genealogy of Contemporary Musical Assemblages (MEJC 4, 2011). His current research project is entitled Intercommunal musical geographies of late Ottoman Istanbul, funded by the Hellenic Foundation of Research and Innovation.

Former Collaborators
Census Register Reading Group
Research Consultants
Data Management / IT Support
Research Collaborators & Affiliates
Student Researchers
Yasmine Kaki
Yasmine Kaki is an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and was hired through the URAP program at Berkeley. She is a History and Sociology Major concentrating on the study of empires and their relationship with minority groups. Additionally, she is an associate editor for the Berkeley Undergraduate History Journal, Clio's Scroll, and an intern at the Middle Eastern North African Student Retention Center.
Lukas Carbone
Lukas Carbone is an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, and was hired through the URAP program at Berkeley. He is a History and Political Economy Major concentrating on the study of modernization, development, and underdevelopment during the twentieth century. Additionally, he is a member of the Berkeley Political Economy Student Association and a Policy Coordinator for the Berkeley Student Cooperative.

Previous Student Researchers
Our previous student researchers through the URAP program at UC Berkeley include Augustin de Jesus and George Sicner, both of whom were a part of Istanpolis from 2022-2023. Additionally, our previous student researchers through the Data Science Discovery Program at Berkeley include Emir Dinç and Taha Demirkan from 2022 to 2023 and Meltem Su, Arda Akman, Basiq Shah, and Cosmin Desmukh from 2021 to 2022. Other former student collaborators include Andreani Kyprianou, Aliki Vitsa, and Paul Karras.
Lara Oge
Lara Oge is an undergraduate student majoring in Music with a concentration in Musicology, and minoring in Digital Humanities and Medieval Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests broadly include music in 15th- and 16th-century Europe. As a native of Istanbul, she is also interested in the history of her hometown. Besides her academic work, Lara is an editor for the Berkeley Undergraduate Journal and a singer in the University Chorus.

© 2023 by İstanΠόλις Collaborative. Created on Editor X.