Doğan BERMEK, ADO - ADİP

Doğan Bermek, ADO, ADİP

Doğan Bermek furthered his education at Ankara State Architecture-Engineering Academy and Gazi University and became an architect in 1971. He worked as a lecturer at the university and undertook an MA in Business Administration. Since 1976, he has worked in the private sector in the fields of industrial projects, planning, technology transfer and foreign trade. Since his high school years, he has participated in activities relating to folk dances, folklore and cultural heritage at Folk Houses, at METU Turkish Folk Sciences Society and at various Alevi organisations. He has worked for a long time in various NGOs for the Alevi movement. He was the founding president of the Federation of Alevi Endowments (2005-2014) and the founder of the ADO Alevi Philosophy Centre (2015). He is the president of ADO.

Prof. Dr. İştar GÖZAYDIN, Professor of Law and Politics

Prof. Dr. İştar GÖZAYDIN, Professor of law and politics

İştar Gözaydın studied law at Istanbul University (1981) and New York University (1987). Starting her academic career in 1983, she became a full professor in 2006. Gözaydın held tenure positions at various universities in Turkey. Focusing on state-religion relations, the role of religion in Turkey’s foreign policy, religious discrimination, and law-politics relations, Gözaydın has also worked at London University Birkbeck College and London Metropolitan University as a visiting professor. She was deprived of her freedom by being jailed upon alleged charges in the context of “Anti-Terror Law” between December 2016 and March 2017. Dr. Gozaydın was fully acquitted in 2018, however since her passport was nullified by the authorities, and have not been returned for a full three years, she had not been able to physically attend the Leibniz Professorship position that she was granted in 2018 at Leibniz University. Being a founding member of Helsinki Citizens Assembly (now officially Citizens Assembly), a prominent human rights NGO, and having published over a hundred works on national and international platforms, Gözaydın was granted Lisl and Leo Eitinger Human Rights Award by Oslo University.

Dr. Yuri Stoyanov, SOAS University of London

Dr. Yuri Stoyanov, SOAS University of London

Dr. Yuri Stoyanov is a Research Associate at Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East at SOAS University of London and he holds a guest professorship at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He obtained his PhD from The Warburg Institute at the University of London. He has many publications in numerous languages including, The Hidden Tradition in Europe: The Secret History of Medieval Christian Heresy (Penguin, 1994); The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy (Yale University Press, 2000); Defenders and Enemies of the True Cross: The Sasanian Conquest of Jerusalem in 614 and Byzantine Ideology of Anti-Persian Warfare (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2011); “Christian Dualism and Alevism: The State of Research and Evidence” in Alevism Bektashism in the Balkans (Çorlu Municipality Publications, 2015). His research interests include Cosmologies, soteriologies and eschatologies of Zoroastriansim, dualist, heretical, mystical, esoteric and apocalyptic currents in the Abrahamic faiths, Eastern Christian theologies and ideologies of warfare, religious sectarian groups and minorities in the Balkans and the tatus of religious and archaeological sites in these regions and associated cultural heritage protection issues. 

Vanessa R. de Obaldía, ERC - Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

Vanessa R. de Obaldía, ERC - Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

Vanessa R. de Obaldía has a BA in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from the University of Cambridge (2009), an MA in Islamic Law from Marmara University (2014), and a Graduate Diploma in Law from BPP University (2017). She was awarded a PhD in History by Aix-Marseille University (2018) for her thesis titled “A Legal and Historical Study of Latin Catholic Church Properties in Istanbul from the Ottoman Conquest of 1453 until 1740.” Vanessa holds a three-year postdoctoral position at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz for the ERC Starting Grant project titled Mount Athos in Medieval Eastern Mediterranean Society (MAMEMS): Contextualizing the History of a Monastic Republic, ca. 850-1550.  She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and is currently co-editing a multi authored volume on Latin Catholicism in Ottoman Istanbul which will be published by The Isis Press in late 2021. Her research interests include doctrine and practice in Islamic law, non-Muslims and their communal and religious institutions in the Ottoman Empire, and the study of historical and contemporary charitable endowments.

Prof. Dr. Cemal KAFADAR, Harvard University

Prof. Dr. Cemal KAFADAR, Harvard University

Prof. Kafadar is interested in the social and cultural history of the Middle East and southeastern Europe in the late medieval/early modern era. He teaches courses on Ottoman history, urban space, travel, popular culture, history and cinema. His latest essays include “How Dark is the History of the Night, How Black the Story of Coffee, How Bitter the Tale of Love: the Changing Measure of Leisure and Pleasure in Early Modern Istanbul;” “Evliya Celebi in Dalmatia: an Ottoman Traveler’s Encounters with the Arts of the Franks;” and “Between Amasya and Istanbul: Bayezid II, His Librarian and the Textual Turn of the Late Fifteenth Century.”

He has curated a program of twelve films, titled “Rebels, Saints and Troubadours,” for the Istanbul International Film Festival in 2009 and worked closely on the conception and production of two historical documentaries: “Inspirations” (dir. Nurdan Arca, 2005) on Sheikh Bedreddin, an Ottoman intellectual executed for his ideas ca.1417; “Invisible to the Eye” (dir. Zeynep Dadak, 2020) on the mid-17th century account of Istanbul by Eremya Chelebi Kömürjian.

Laki VİNGAS, Rumvader, KMKD

Mr. Laki VİNGAS, Rumvader, KMKD

Laki Vingas was born in Istanbul and graduated from Mechanical Engineering at Yıldız Technical University. He has actively worked in business since 1983. He is married with three children.

He has actively participated in civil society activities, worked to improve dialogue through culture, and since 1986, he has been the founder and director of many associations, foundations and non-governmental organisations.

In 2006, on the initiative of its president Laki Vingas, the Zografyon Alumni Association organised a conference on “Today and Tomorrow”, which was a turning point for Istanbul’s Greek Community. With the support of Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency, the Zografyon Alumni Association, of which Laki Vingas is an Advisory Board member, undertook a project on “Greek Architects of Westernized Istanbul”. Bringing an unknown aspect of Istanbul to light, the project has taken the form of an exhibition, a book and a short film in many different places both in Turkey and abroad.

Between 2008 and 2014, Vingas worked as the 1st and 2nd term Representative of the Community Foundations at the General Directorate of Foundations. He became the Founding President of RUMVADER, which was established in 2011 to gather Greek Foundations under one roof. EU Projects such as “Minority Citizens = Equal Citizens” and Side by Side “Overcoming the distances created in the past, building a common future together” have been carried out by the Association.

He is one of the founders of the Association for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, the Imroz Education and Culture Association and the Yanındayız Association. He has also been undertaking the European Union project titled “Social Media and Minorities” and “Discovering Yeniköy” projects at the Yeniköy Panayia Greek Orthodox Church and School Foundation which he has chaired since 2006.

Prof. Dr. Raoul MOTIKA, University of Hamburg

Prof. Dr. Raoul MOTIKA, University of Hamburg

After completing coursework in the history and culture of the Middle East, Iranian studies, Political Science, and Historical Methodology at the Universities of Munich, Izmir, and Tehran, he graduated with an MA from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 1992. He received his doctorate in 1997 with a dissertation in Islamic Studies at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg on the recent history of Iranian Azerbaijan. After working for several years as a researcher and lecturer at the Heidelberg University, he was the coordinator of the international research project “Islamic Education in the Soviet Union and the CIS” at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (2002–2004). He was then appointed as Assistant Professor in Islamic Studies with a focus on the Ottoman Empire, Turkey and Iran and contemporary research at Bern University (2005–2006).

In fall 2006, he accepted an appointment to a W3 professorship for Turkish Studies at Hamburg University. He simultaneously served as director of the Heidelberg Centre for Euro-Asiatic Studies e.V. at Heidelberg University (HECEAS e.V.) and as spokesman for the TürkeiEuropaZentrum Hamburg (TEZ), which he founded. Currently, he continues to head a postdoctoral project within the SFB 950 “Manuscript Cultures in Africa, Asia, and Europe” at Hamburg University He has written and edited several books on the modern history of Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Ottoman Empire. In addition to contributions to the history of the Middle East, he has written numerous articles on the political and religious situation of the Middle East, Turkey and the Caucasus.

Fr. Dr. Claudio MONGE O.P., DoSt-I

Fr. Dr. Claudio Monge O.P., DoSt-I

Claudio Monge is a Dominican friar who has been based with the Istanbul community of the Order of Preachers since 2003. He is the director of DoSt-I (Dominican Study Institute – Istanbul). He studied theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, and Turkish language and culture at the Marc Bloch University in Strasbourg. There, he also received his doctorate in theology of religions, with a dissertation on hospitality in the Abrahamic religions. Between 2009 and 2013 he participated to the research programme at the Catholic University in Paris on the dialogue between the three monotheisms. Since 2013 he has been participating in another programme on the problem of the translation of theological concepts in different cultural contexts. He is the author of Stranierità: nomadismo del’anima (EDB, 2014), Stranieri con Dio; L’ospitalità nelle tradizioni dei tre monoteismi abramitici (Edizioni Terra Santa, 2013); Dieu Hote: Recherche Historique et Theologique Sur Les Rituels de L'Hospitalite (Zetabooks, 2008). He is also the co-editor of a multi-authored volume in commemoration of the 800^th year of the Order of Preachers titled Domenicani a Costantinopoli prima e dopo l’impero ottomano (Nerbini, 2017).

Prof. Dionigi ALBERA, IDEMEC

Prof. Dionigi ALBERA, IDEMEC

Dionigi Albera is an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He is based at the IDEMEC (Institute of European Mediterranean and Comparative Ethnology, Aix-Marseille University), which he has directed from 2006 to 2016. His research has focused on Europe and the Mediterranean, and his interests include migration, kinship and family, pilgrimage and interfaith mixing. He has published two personal books, 33 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and 70 book chapters. He has edited 16 books and 3 journal issues. A book he edited on interfaith pilgrimages in the Mediterranean was first published in French, and then translated into Spanish, English and Italian. Among his latest books are: Sharing sacred spaces in the Mediterranean. Christians, Muslims and Jews at Shrines and Sanctuaries, edited with Maria Couroucli, Indiana University Press, 2012; Dieu, une enquête. Judaïsme, christianisme, islam: ce qui les distingue, ce qui les rapproche, edited with Katell Berthelot, Flammarion, 2013; International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies: Itineraries, Gaps and Obstacles, edited with John Eade, Routledge, 2015; Pellegrini del nuovo millennio, edited with Melissa Blanchard, Mesogea, 2015; Reframing the History of Family and Kinship: From the Alps towards Europe, edited with Luigi Lorenzetti et Jon Mathieu, Peter Lang, 2016; Dictionnaire de la Méditerranée, edited with Maryline Crivello et Mohamed Tozy, Actes Sud, 2016; New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies, edited with John Eade, Routledge, 2017.

Prof. Dr. Ayhan KAYA, Istanbul Bilgi University

Prof. Dr. Ayhan KAYA, Istanbul Bilgi University

Ayhan Kaya is Professor of Politics at the Department of International Relations, Istanbul Bilgi University; Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence; and a member of the Science Academy, Turkey. He is currently European Research Council Advanced Grant holder (ERC AdG, 2019-2024). He received his PhD and MA degrees at the University of Warwick, England. His most recent manuscript is Populism and Heritage in Europe. Lost in Diversity and Unity (London: Routledge, 2019). His recent edited volume is Memory in European Populism (London: Routledge, 2019, with Chiara de Cesari). Some of his books are Turkish Origin Migrants and their Descendants: Hyphenated Identities in Transnational Space (Palgrave, 2018), Europeanization and Tolerance in Turkey (London: Palgrave, 2013); Islam, Migration and Integration: The Age of Securitization (London: Palgrave, 2012).

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Erhan KURTARIR, Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi

Asst. Prof. Dr. Erhan KURTARIR, Yıldız Technical University

Erhan Kurtır has been working at Yıldız Technical University’s City and Regional Planning Department in the field of education and research since 2005. He completed his undergraduate education at METU in 2003. He completed his master's degree at YTU Institute of Science in 2006 with a thesis on the Marketing Strategies of Cities. During his doctoral studies, he conducted field studies in Turkey and England in which he evaluated the relationship between “faith” and “space”. In his doctoral thesis, which he completed at the same institution in 2012, he investigated the role of space and planning in the processes of maintaining the cultural identities of minority and disadvantaged belief groups which are not sufficiently represented in the planning processes. After completing his thesis, he conducted the Istanbul Cemevleri Inventory project between 2013 and 2015. He served as a Board Member of the Istanbul Branch of the Chamber of Urban Planners between 2014 and 2016. Furthermore, he has provided consultancy and expert support to various non-governmental organisations, local administrations and public institutions.

His current areas of research are Cultural Geography, Geography of Religion; Migration and Urban Refugees; Local Democracy and Participation in Planning, Human Rights, and Right to the City. In his current research projects, he focuses on urban planning policy which is inclusive, sensitive to human rights and sustainable. He conducts research projects especially on Local Adaptation Processes of Urban Refugees and Inclusive Local Government Models. He continues his research in this direction on management models focused on inclusive local policy, participation in planning, and equitable public service delivery.

Personal webpage: https://avesis.yildiz.edu.tr/kurtarir

Assoc. Prof. Hakan YÜCEL, Galatasaray University

Assoc. Prof. Hakan YÜCEL, Galatasaray University

Hakan Yücel graduated from the Department of Public Administration at Marmara University in 1995, and from a Politics and Social Sciences Master's Program in 1998. He completed a second MA in Sociology at EHESS in Paris in 2000. In 2006, he defended his doctoral thesis at EHESS titled "A Spatial-Generational Identity: The Alevi Youth Finder in Istanbul Gazi District". Yucel, who works as a lecturer at Galatasaray University, has publications on the subjects of youth and urban sociology, Alevi identity, and popular culture.

Prof. Marie COUROUCLI, IIAC

Prof. Marie COUROUCLI, IIAC

Maria Couroucli, HDR, Research Director at CNRS, practices historical and comparative anthropology in the context of the Greek, Balkan and Mediterranean world. Her work has focused on kinship systems and social organisation; identity representations, nationalism and ethno-religious representations in contemporary Greece. She co-directed with Dionigi Albera comparative research on the methods of sharing sacred places in the Mediterranean between Christians, Jews and Muslims within the framework of the European Network REMSH then RAMSES. More recently, she has directed research programs on intellectual traditions in Greece and the Balkans. His current work concerns social and collective memory and uses of the past in the context of economic, social and political crisis.

Her areas of research are: Historical anthropology; ethnohistory; religious practices; shared holy places; memory; uses of the past; values ​​and practices of trust in times of crisis.

Dr. Mine YILDIRIM, Freedom of Belief Initiative

Dr. Mine YILDIRIM, Freedom of Belief Initiative

Dr. Mine Yıldırım is a scholar of human rights law and an expert on international protection of freedom of religion or belief. She is the founder of the Freedom of Belief Initiative, established in 2011 as the first Turkish human rights based initiative specializing in freedom of religion or belief. She works with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee on this Initiative monitoring and reporting on freedom of religion or belief in Turkey. Yildirim is a member of the OSCE/ODIHR Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief. She has served as a consultant on numerous international projects. Her work covers different facets of religious freedom, including the collective dimension of freedom of religion or belief, religious minorities and religious education. She was the co-recipient of the Stefanus Prize in 2016. She received her doctoral degree at AAbo Akademi Institute for Human Rights with her thesis on the collective dimension of freedom of religion or belief. Her doctoral thesis is published as a book entitled The Collective Dimension of Freedom of Religion: A Case Study on Turkey.  She is a member of the Editorial Board of the academic journal Religion & Human Rights and has published extensively in academic journals and contributes to Forum 18.

Prof. Rossitsa GRADEVA, American University of Bulgaria

Dr. Mine YILDIRIM, Freedom of Belief Initiative

Dr. Mine Yıldırım is a scholar of human rights law and an expert on international protection of freedom of religion or belief. She is the founder of the Freedom of Belief Initiative, established in 2011 as the first Turkish human rights based initiative specializing in freedom of religion or belief. She works with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee on this Initiative monitoring and reporting on freedom of religion or belief in Turkey. Yildirim is a member of the OSCE/ODIHR Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief. She has served as a consultant on numerous international projects. Her work covers different facets of religious freedom, including the collective dimension of freedom of religion or belief, religious minorities and religious education. She was the co-recipient of the Stefanus Prize in 2016. She received her doctoral degree at AAbo Akademi Institute for Human Rights with her thesis on the collective dimension of freedom of religion or belief. Her doctoral thesis is published as a book entitled The Collective Dimension of Freedom of Religion: A Case Study on Turkey.  She is a member of the Editorial Board of the academic journal Religion & Human Rights and has published extensively in academic journals and contributes to Forum 18.

Doç. Dr. Ali Çağlar Deniz - ADO

Dr. Ali Çağlar DENIZ, ADO

Ali Çağlar Deniz studied Theology in Selçuk University (2002), wrote a MA thesis on Sociology of Religion in Gazi University (2006) and obtained Phd in İstanbul University on Sociology (2013). He has been as a visiting lecturor at Delaware University (2012-2013, USA), Univerza v Ljubljani (2014, Slovenia) and Kırgız-Türk Manas Üniversitesi (2015, Kyrgyzstan). He has published some books on Turkish Modernization, the Sociology of History, Migration and Gender; Türk Modernleşmesinde Düşümsel Dönüşümler (Anahtar K., 2013), Öğrenci İşi (İletişim, 2015), Hafıza Yelpazesi (E, 2014), Toplumsal Hareket Teorileri ve Ortadoğu İsyanları (Orion, 2015), Öteki Muhafazakarlık (Phoenix, 2016), Yeni Medya ve Toplum (Literatürk, 2016), Bizim Müstakbel Hep Harap Oldu (Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2016). He was the consultant of a documentary conducted by TRT named after as “Öğrenci İşi” based on his book. Deniz has done research on religious minority groups and migration since 2017. He is the moderator of a gender equality project headed by Mavi Kalem on Syrian refugee men living in Turkey  since 2018.

Jun. Prof. Aude Aylin DE TAPIA, Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg

Jun. Prof. Aude Aylin DE TAPIA, Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg

Aude Aylin de Tapia is a Junior Professor in Turkish and Islamic studies at the Oriental Seminar of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Germany). In 2016, she defended her PhD Thesis on the relations between Rums and Muslims in nineteenth-century Cappadocia (EHESS-Paris & Bogaziçi University-Istanbul). In 2016-2017, she was a researcher and archivist at the Bogaziçi University Archives and Documentation Center and a lecturer at the Galatasaray University, and in 2017-2019 a postdoctoral fellow at the Aix Marseille University. Her main research focuses on religious interactions between Rums and Muslims, shared worship places, and religious heritage complex in Turkey.

Prof. Dr. Ayşe Nur ÖKTEN, Yıldız Technical University

Prof. Dr. Ayşe Nur ÖKTEN, Yıldız Technical University

She graduated from Robert College with a Bachelor in Business Administration (B.B.A.) in 1970 and obtained her PhD from the Department of Economic Sociology at Istanbul University in 1980. She obtained a full professorship in regional planning at Yıldız Technical University in 1994. She retired from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the same university in 2014. Her research interests include urban sociology, human geography, economic geography, methodology and regional planning.

Her selected publications include:

q  OKTEN, A.N., CEKIC, I. T., KOZAMAN, S. (2021)  Civic engagement in an informal settlement: Between the devil and deep blue sea, Cities 112 (2021) 103110 (online)

q  OKTEN, A and  EVREN, Y. (2011) Stickiness and slipperiness in Istanbul’s old city jewellery cluster: a survival story,

q  EVREN, Y. and OKTEN, A (2011) Family solidarity and place as agents in the reorganization in health care in Istanbul; A study of the interaction of a hospital with local culture and built environment in the historical district, International Planning Studies (IPS) 17(1), 2011.

q  OKTEN, A., ALTINOK, E. ve BILEN, O. (2008) “Yoksulluk Deplasmanda” (The displaced  poverty). Paper presented at Dünya Şehircilik Günü 32. Kolokyumu (The World City Day, 32nd Congress) , 6-8 November 2008, İstanbul.

Prof. Dr. Beatrice ST. LAURENT - Bridgewater State University

Prof. Dr. Beatrice ST. LAURENT, Bridgewater State University

Dr. Beatrice St. Laurent received her PhD in Islamic Art at Harvard University as a student of Oleg Grabar. Her doctoral thesis Ottomanization and Modernization: The Architecture and Urban Development of Bursa and the Genesis of Tradition 1839-1914 focused on the Late Ottoman Period of the first Ottoman capital. She is Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Art History, College of Humanities & Social Sciences at Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, MA, USA. She has been involved in research on the restorations of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque for 30 years with many book chapters and articles on the subject including “The Dome of the Rock. Restorations and Significance 1540-1918,” Ottoman Jerusalem eds. S. Auld and R. Hillenbrand published in 2000. She and with the collaboration of her now deceased colleague Arch. Isam Awwad (former Chief Architect and Conservator of the Ḥarām al-Sharīf) are currently completing a book on 7^th century Jerusalem entitled Capitalizing Jerusalem: Mu‘awiyā’s Urban Vision 638-680 as well as another book on the 20^th and 21^st century restorations of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque.

Doç. Dr. Birgül AÇIKYILDIZ - Paul Valéry University

Assoc. Prof. Birgül AÇIKYILDIZ, Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III

Received her BA and MA degrees in art history at Hacettepe University in Turkey; her M.Phil (DEA) and PhD at Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne University in France. She was appointed to a Barakat Trust Postdoctoral fellowship at the Khalili Research Centre for the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford where she worked also as a research fellow. She, then, received the Aga Khan (AKPIA) and Turkish Cultural Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowships and worked as a research fellow at Harvard University. She taught at the University of Paris I and Hacettepe University. She chaired the Department of History of Art at Mardin Artuklu University. Currently, she works as a research associate at the University of Paul Valéry, Montpellier III and as a researcher at French Anatolian Research Institute in Istanbul.

Major research interests include Yezidi art and culture, Islamic art and architecture;  Ottoman Modernisation, Architecture of religious communities of Mesopotamia.

She is the author of the book, The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion, London and New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2010, 2014. 

Atty. Cem Murat SOFUOĞLU, Istanbul Okan University

Atty. Cem Murat SOFUOĞLU, Istanbul Okan University

After graduating from Saint Joseph French High School for Boys, in 1977 I enrolled at Istanbul University’s Faculty of Law. After my graduation and my legal internship, I started to work as a lawyer in 1984. I completed my master's degree on European Union Law and Institutions at Bilgi University in 1998. In 2001, I was a pioneer in the establishment of the European Union Law Commission at the Istanbul Bar Association, and I was the president of the same commission for many years. For a long time since 2002, I have organised events in a non-governmental organisation for Turkey to be a candidate member of the European Union. I made a programme on human rights and democracy on Cem TV between 2012-2013. I started to engage in this profession after passing the mediatorship exam in 2017. Since 2013, I have been teaching as a lecturer at Okan University’s Faculty of Law. I have published many articles (one in a foreign language) on literature and law. In 2021, I will complete my 37th year in my profession as a lawyer. I write and speak English and French well.

Asst. Prof. Dr. Cemal SALMAN, Istanbul University

Asst. Prof. Dr. Cemal SALMAN, Istanbul University

He was born in Sivas in 1982. Up until his graduate studies, his educational life was spent in Ankara, where he immigrated with his family when he was six years old. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Public Administration and Political Science at Gazi University; he received his PhD from Istanbul University. During his doctoral studies, he conducted field research in Sivas-Yıldızeli, Ankara, Germany and various regions of France during numerous periods between 2013-2014, and worked as a visiting researcher at the University of Cologne-Germany for six months in 2014. His thesis was titled “The Transformation of Alevi Identity in Migration and the Urbanisation Process”. He was awarded the 2017 Young Social Scientists Award of the Year in the doctorate category. He also participated in the team conducting research on “Syrian Immigrant Labor”, which was awarded the DİSK-Kemal Türkler Emek Research Award in 2017. In 2018-2019, he obtained a TÜBİTAK scholarship for his post-doctoral research project titled “The Effects of Emigration on Social Memory, Belief and Culture: Alevis in Britain and Germany” and worked as a visiting researcher at University College London. During this period, he carried out field studies on the Alevi diaspora in two countries. He has been working as a researcher for the TÜBITAK project titled “The Shelter Experiences of Syrian Refugees in Istanbul” since September 2019. Salman, who has been a member of the Faculty of Political Sciences at Istanbul University since 2011, is currently a lecturer at this faculty. Salman’s academic interests are spatial theory and politics, migration, urbanisation, social memory, culture-identity studies and Alevi identity in particular; his non-academic interests are poetry and cinema. In addition to his book titled “Lâmekândan Cihana: Immigration Identity Alevism”, he has published many articles, reports, poems and writings on national and international issues.

Prof. Emma LOOSELY, University of Exeter

Prof. Emma LOOSELY, University of Exeter

Emma Loosley Leeming studied at the University of York, The Courtauld Institute of Art and the School of Oriental and African Studies in the UK before taking up a position teaching Middle Eastern Art and Architecture at the University of Manchester. In 2013 she joined the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter where she specialises in the Christianity of the Middle East and Caucasus, with a special focus on the material culture of early and mediaeval Christianity in these regions. Her particular research expertise is the archaeology and architecture of early Syrian Christianity and, until the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, she regularly excavated in Syria having led two Anglo-Syrian excavations at Dayr Mar Elian, Qaryatayn, and Zalabiyeh on the Euphrates. From 2012-2017 she held an ERC Starting Grant to research the relationship between Syria and Georgia in Late Antiquity and details of the project can be found at: http://architectureandasceticism.exeter.ac.uk During her time in Syria she lived for a year in Aleppo amongst the Urfali, the descendants of the Christians expelled from Şanlıurfa in 1924, and it is their stories about their ancestral home that form the basis of her paper for this conference.

Asst. Prof. Dr. Erhan KURTARIR, Yıldız Technical University

Asst. Prof. Dr. Erhan KURTARIR, Yıldız Technical University

Erhan Kurtır has been working at Yıldız Technical University’s City and Regional Planning Department in the field of education and research since 2005. He completed his undergraduate education at METU in 2003. He completed his master's degree at YTU Institute of Science in 2006 with a thesis on the Marketing Strategies of Cities. During his doctoral studies, he conducted field studies in Turkey and England in which he evaluated the relationship between “faith” and “space”. In his doctoral thesis, which he completed at the same institution in 2012, he investigated the role of space and planning in the processes of maintaining the cultural identities of minority and disadvantaged belief groups which are not sufficiently represented in the planning processes. After completing his thesis, he conducted the Istanbul Cemevleri Inventory project between 2013 and 2015. He served as a Board Member of the Istanbul Branch of the Chamber of Urban Planners between 2014 and 2016. Furthermore, he has provided consultancy and expert support to various non-governmental organisations, local administrations and public institutions.

His current areas of research are Cultural Geography, Geography of Religion; Migration and Urban Refugees; Local Democracy and Participation in Planning, Human Rights, and Right to the City. In his current research projects, he focuses on urban planning policy which is inclusive, sensitive to human rights and sustainable. He conducts research projects especially on Local Adaptation Processes of Urban Refugees and Inclusive Local Government Models. He continues his research in this direction on management models focused on inclusive local policy, participation in planning, and equitable public service delivery.

Personal webpage: https://avesis.yildiz.edu.tr/kurtarir

Dr. Leonard HAMMER, University of Arizona

Dr. Leonard HAMMER, University of Arizona

Leonard Hammer is the Director of Outreach and Development for the Human Rights Practice graduate programs at the University of Arizona, and the Stein Family Visiting Professor at the Judaic Studies Center, also at the University of Arizona.

He has published books and articles on issues pertaining to international law, international human rights, cultural rights, and sacred space. He has worked as an International Expert for the Open Society Foundation and has received research grants from the United States Institute of Peace, Carnegie Council on Peace and International Affairs, the Israel Academy of Sciences, and the Taiwan Fellowship.   

Doç. Dr. Dilaver AZİMLİ, Azerbaycan Ulusal Bilimler Akademisi (Hatırasına)

Assoc. Prof.  Dilaver AZİMLİ, Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences

I was born in the north of Azerbaijan, in the village of Agdash, in the Jalilabad region. Our region is separated from the South of Azerbaijan by barbed wire. The disintegration of Azerbaijan was a very painful experience for me during my childhood. After graduating from high school, I served in the military. I then graduated from Baku State University called MA Rasulzade. During my student years, I was one of the most active participants in a movement that began in the north of Azerbaijan. At present, I am the Deputy Chairman for Ideological Affairs at the Whole Azerbaijani Centre (Bütov), which is fighting for the unification of Azerbaijan. I am a Doctor of Philosophy in History and Associate Professor at the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences. I am married, and have two children.

Ms. Lucía CIRIANNI SALAZAR - Free University of Berlin

Ms. Lucía CIRIANNI SALAZAR, Free University of Berlin

Lucía Cirianni Salazar holds a BA in Ethnology from the National School of Anthropology and History of Mexico, and an MA in Asian and African Studies from El Colegio de México (The College of Mexico), where she was ascribed to the Middle Eastern Studies Department. She is currently a PhD candidate in Islamic Studies at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies of the Freie Universität Berlin, where she is writing a dissertation on the transformation of the Sufi Lodges in Turkey after their official closure, connecting the different forms of "tekkes" that exist nowadays with the historical narratives from contemporary Sufi communities about the law that banned the Sufi orders. Her work analyses contested and interconnected narratives about secularity, modernity and Sufism through the use and representation of space. She has published several articles in Spanish and English on topics like Sufi rebellions in early-republican Turkey, contesting narratives of the past in Turkey, and Sufism in Mexico.

Mr. Mehmet Fatih GÜDEN, Van Yüzüncü Yıl University

Mr. Mehmet Fatih GÜDEN, Van Yüzüncü Yıl University

I was born on April 27, 1984 in Van. In 2004, I graduated from the Electrical and Electronics Department at the Vocational School of Van Yüzüncü Yıl University. I completed my undergraduate education at the Department of Art History at the same university. I am currently doing my master's thesis on the subject of “Christian Religious Architecture in the Gürpınar District of Van” at Van Yüzüncü Yıl University’s Institute of Social Sciences.

For nearly 10 years, I have been conducting field studies on a voluntary basis to create archives and an inventory in Lake Van Basin, which is in danger of losing its historical and cultural heritage of thousands of years due to unawareness, treasure hunting and security problems. I tried to explain these activities by organising presentations and seminars in many different institutions, faculties and cultural centres. In spite of facing the security problems and geographical difficulties during my research, I discovered many unregistered buildings and informed the relevant institutions about them. In addition, I produced  a 60-minute documentary called “Silent Bells” in order to raise awareness and sensitivity about the society in which we live.

The desire to protect Cultural Heritage, which has become a life challenge for me, inspires my efforts to produce new projects and integrate them into society and to make the society in which we live more sensitive to these structures.

Dr. Markus DRESSLER -University of Leipzig

Dr. Markus DRESSLER, University of Leipzig

Markus Dressler received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies (Erfurt University, 2001), Doçentlik in Sociology (Turkey, 2011), and Habilitation in Religious Studies (Bayreuth University, 2014). He is currently DFG Heisenberg Scholar at the Institute for the Study of Religions, Leipzig University. His research interests are Alevi Studies; religion, politics, and society in the late Ottoman Empire and Turkey; religion & secularism.

Selected publications:

Islamicate Secularities in Past and Present. Special issue Historical Social Research 2019, co-ed. M.Wohlrab-Sahr, A.Salvatore.

Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam. New York 2013.

Secularism and Religion-Making. New York 2011. Co-ed. A.-P.S.Mandair.

Sufis in Western Society: Global Networking and Locality. London 2009, co-ed. R.Geaves, G.M.Klinkhammer.

Dr. Nicholas AL-JELOO - Kadir Has University

Dr. Nicholas AL-JELOO, Kadir Has University

Dr. Nicholas Al-Jeloo is currently an English Language Instructor at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. His was previously a lecturer of Syriac at the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne (2014-2018) and has conducted research for the Peshitta Institute (Leiden University), University of Sydney and Syriac Language Research Centre (Whitley College, University of Divinity).

In 2013, he completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Sydney, focusing on the socio-cultural history and heritage of Assyrians in Iran’s Urmia region, based on a corpus of over 2,300 inscriptions in Syriac and Neo-Aramaic. For his MA thesis in World Religions (Eastern Christianity) at Leiden University, he evaluated and analyzed characteristics of pre-nineteenth century Eastern Assyrian church architecture, based on 114 examples from Iraq, Turkey and Iran. He also holds a BA in Semitic Languages from Sydney University.

He is a socio-cultural historian with expertise in indigenous Middle Eastern minorities, Eastern Christianity, the history of the Middle East and Islamic World, as well as interfaith and intercultural relations. His specialty is in Syriac and Neo-Aramaic language, literature and epigraphy, and much of his research relies on data from data collected first-hand in the field over numerous surveys conducted since 2002.

Prof. Paolo GIRARDELLI, Boğazıçı University

Prof. Paolo GIRARDELLI, Boğazıçı University

Prof. Paolo Girardelli is an art and architectural historian working on encounters and contacts between Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean in the late Ottoman period. One of his main research topics is the architecture of the non-Muslim communities in the Ottoman Empire. He is based in Istanbul since 1999, where he teaches in the Department of History of Boğaziçi (Bosphorus) University. He was a Fellow in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT in 2005-06, and a visiting scholar in the Art and Art History Department of UNC-Chapel Hill in 2018-19.  He is a member of the Italian chapter of ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites).

His main publications focus on European and non-Muslim architectural/urban/visual culture in the plural urban environments of the late-Ottoman world: Istanbul, Izmir, Salonica, Alexandria and beyond. He was co-editor, with Ezio Godoli, of the volume Italian Architects and Builders in the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, and guest editor of a thematic issue of the journal Architecture Beyond Europe on the space of diplomacy, both published in 2017. His current book project is a spatial and architectural history of the so-called Eastern Question, observed from the point of view of the changing urban and architectural image of Pera, the cosmopolitan district of diplomacy and foreign settlement in Istanbul.

Asst. Prof. Paschalis ANDROUDIS, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Asst. Prof. Paschalis ANDROUDIS, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

   Born in Thessaloniki, Greece (1965). He has a diploma in Architecture of the Polytechnic School of Thessaloniki (1988), a DEA (Master’s Degree) in Byzantine Art and Archaeology from the University Paris I- Panthéon Sorbonne (1990). He obtained his PhD in Byzantine Archaeology from Paris I in January 1995 and a Master’s degree in Conservation Studies from the IoAAS of the University of York, UK in June 1995. He also studied Byzantine History and Civilisation in Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). For his Studies he obtained Scholarships from Paris-I Sorbonne and Arvanitidis Foundation, from the European Union, from A.G. Leventis Foundation, from the Alexandros Onassis Foundation, and from IKY. He also obtained a scholarship from Max van Berchem Foundation (Switzerland) for studying Seljuk and Islamic metalwork in Mt Athos.

   He was involved in many research programs, recording of antiquities and excavations all over Greece. He also conducted more than 100 studies of Conservation and restoration of Historic monuments (mainly churches and fortifications) all over Greece.

   He participated with papers in more than 150 National and International Scientific Congresses on Byzantine and Early Ottoman art and architecture. He published 10 monographs and over 130 articles on Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman History, art and architecture in Greek and International scientific magazines and proceeding of Congresses.

   In January 2012 he was elected Lecturer in Byzantine Archaeology in the Department of History and Archaeology of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, with emphasis in Byzantine Art.

In June 2017 he was elected Assistant Professor in Byzantine Art and Archaeology in the same Department.

Dr. Radu DIPRATU - Institute for South-East European Studies

Dr. Radu DIPRATU, Institute for South-East European Studies

I am a researcher at the Institute for South-East European Studies of the Romanian Academy since December 2018, where I am currently working on a project dedicated to the evolution of French and English ‘ahdnames in the 16^th-17^th centuries. Starting with July 2021, I will be involved in the ERC TYPARABIC Project implemented at the same Institute. In 2017, I obtained a PhD degree in Ottoman History from the Faculty of History, the University of Bucharest for a thesis on the religious articles of seventeenth-century ‘ahdnames. I was a postdoctoral fellow at the New Europe College (2018-2019) and at the Humanities Division of the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (2020). My research focuses on topics such as Catholics in the Ottoman Empire and Ottoman diplomacy in the early modern era.

Latest publications: ‘The Valona Affair (1638), Its Ensuing Anti-Piracy Nişan and the Development of Ottoman-Venetian Peace Agreements’, in I. Feodorov (ed.), South-Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, Brăila, 2020, p. 157-187; ‘A Forgotten Capitulation (‘ahdname): The Commercial Privileges Granted by Sultan Ahmed I to Emperor Matthias in 1617’, in Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes, vol. 58, 2020, p. 51-90 (with Viorel Panaite).

Ms. Sevtap DEMİRTAŞ, EMAV Mevlevi Foundation

Ms. Sevtap DEMİRTAŞ, EMAV Mevlevi Vakfı

Sevtap Demirtaş was born in 1963 in Istanbul. She completed her undergraduate education at Istanbul University’s Faculty of Literature, Department of Systematic Philosophy and Logic.

Between 1987 and 1999, she worked in Advertising, Film Production, TV and Media Organisations.

Between 1999 and 2020, she worked as a Project Consultant and a Coordinator in national and international projects for four disability groups, primarily the visually impaired, supporting access to information, education, employment and daily life in the field of geriatrics at the Six Dots Foundation for the Blind, Membership of Blind Education and Development Association, Turkey Federation of the Visually Impaired, Turkey Confederation for the Disabled and various NGOs. Since 2000, she has been working as a Public Relations Officer at EMAV - Evrensel Mevlana Aşıkları Foundation.

She is fluent in English.

Assoc. Prof. Umut AZAK, Istanbul Okan University

Assoc. Prof. Umut AZAK, Istanbul Okan University

Umut Azak has been a lecturer in the International Relations Department at Istanbul Okan University since 2010. She graduated in 1997 from the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University. She completed her master's degree at SOAS, University of London, and her doctoral studies at the Department of the Turkish Studies at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.  Azak, taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Utrecht and Leiden Universities in 2005-2008, and was a visiting researcher at FU Berlin in the 2008-2009 academic year within the scope of the “Europe in the Middle East - The Middle East in Europe” programme. Azak has published research on the subjects of secularism in Turkey, Islamism, conservatism and the history of women's movement (published books include Islam and Secularism in Turkey: Kemalism, Religion and the Nation State, London: I.B.Tauris, 2010; Türkiye’de Laiklik ve İslam, İstanbul: İletişim 2019). Azak carried out research in the area of memory studies, worked as a trainer and facilitator at the Black Box Association, and has given lectures in areas such as Turkey's political history, the history of political thought, gender and politics.

Asst. Prof. Dr. Veysel DİNLER, Hitit University

Asst. Prof. Dr. Veysel DİNLER, Hitit University

Dr Veysel Dinler is a faculty member of Hitit University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Department of Political Science and Public Administration. He was born in 1979 in Çorum. Graduate of Police Academy and Near East University Faculty of Law. He received his doctorate in public administration from Süleyman Demirel University. He transferred to Hitit University in 2008, while he was serving as the chief inspector in the Turkish national police organization. Since that date, he has been a faculty member at Hitit University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the field of public law. He works on the constitution, political institutions, human rights and criminology.

Prof. Vlada STANKOVIĆ - University of Belgrade

Prof. Vlada STANKOVIĆ, University of Belgrade

Vlada Stanković (Belgrade, 1973) is Professor of Byzantine Studies and Head of the Chair for Byzantine Studies at the University of Belgrade. He is founder and Director of the Center for Cypriot Studies at the same University (2010). He earned his degrees at the University of Belgrade and specialized in the Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies in Vienna (2004) and in Athens as a holder of an Alexander S. Onassis fellowship (2005). He was Visiting Professor at the University of Ioannina in 2008, where he taught a semestral course Twelfth century Byzantine Poetry and Its Political Significance and a member of the adjunct teaching staff at the Open University of Cyprus in the years 2009-2010, teaching in Undergraduate Program Studies in Hellenic culture. From 2009 he is member of the Editorial Board of Byzantinische Zeitschrift. Between 2011 and 2019 he directed a multidisciplinary project Christian culture in the Balkans in the Middle Ages: Byzantine Empire, the Serbs and the Bulgarians from the 9th to the 15th century, funded by Serbian Ministry of Science.

A 2014/2015 Willis F. Doney Member at the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he held lectures at Universities in Greece, on Cyprus, in Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, the U.S., Spain, China, and is currently teaching also at the European University Cyprus on the MA Program Hellenic Studies.

Author of five books and more than two dozen articles (among which The Komnenoi in Constantinople, 1057–1185 (Belgrade 2006, in Serbian), The Balkans and the Byzantine World before and after the captures of Constantinople, 1204 and 1453 (editor, Lanham-Boulder-NewYork-London 2016)), he is Editor in Chief of Lexington Book's series Byzantium – A European Empire and Its Legacy for which he is currently writing a monograph Creating the Rule of Kinsmen: The Transformation of a Political Paradigm in Southeastern Europe in the 12^th and 13^th Century. He is also writing, among other things, A History of Medieval Serbia for Brill's series East-Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1500.

Assoc. Prof. A. Yılmaz SOYYER, Süleyman Demirel University

Assoc. Prof. A. Yılmaz SOYYER, Süleyman Demirel University

He was born on 7 March 1960 in Konya’s Ereğli. He discovered books at the age of 13-14, which we can call early youth. He discovered world classics for the first time in a public library in a county with a population of 25 thousand. Meanwhile, old Turkish poetry captured his attention at his high school literature classes. He graduated from the Faculty of Theology at Ankara, where he went to be a good poet by learning the concept and meaning of old poetry. First, he worked in the Ottoman archive for four years. Learning intermediate Arabic and Persian at the faculty was very useful in the Ottoman archives. This knowledge has served him throughout his academic life. He conducted research on a Çelebi Bektashi village named Kısas for his doctoral thesis in Şanlıurfa, where he was based as a research assistant. During the summer, he spent his time between the Ottoman archives as a researcher, became one of the regulars at the Süleymaniye library, and above all, while reading the Bektashi tombstones in Istanbul, he encountered various oddities. Consequently, he has a good archive of Bektashi manuscripts (as photographs) and gravestone photographs.

Towards the 1990s, Seyran Publications published Soyyer's doctoral thesis under the name “Alevi-Bektashi Tradition in Sociological Perspective”. Later, his work titled “Bedi Nuri at the Beginning of Turkish Sociology” was published in Kubbealtı Publications. In 2005, “Bektashism in the 19th Century” was published by Akademi Publications. In 2005, he took part in the delegation that organized the International Symposium on Bektashism and Alevism at Süleyman Demirel University in Isparta. In 2020, he worked as the Academic Coordinator of the International Hacı Bektaş Veli and His Followers Symposium within the body of the Istanbul Branch of the Türk Ocağı and UNESCO.

“Çerağlar Uyanırken” was published by Doğan Kitap. After a long hiatus, POST Publishing House presented both “Çerağlar Uyanırken” and its new novel “Semah Aşkka Doğrudur” to the reader. His latest novel “Mevlevî” was published by POST. “Those are Our Bektashis” (Şu Bizim Bektaşiler) is the latest scientific work to be published by POST Publishing.

Exactly 40 years after his first poem was published in TÖRE magazine, POST Publishing Housee signed a poetry book under the “Çifte Vav’ın İzinde”. Most recently, “HÜNKÂR, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Bektashism”, in which he conveyed his 30 years of Bektashism experiences, was also published by POST Publication House.

Prof. Zeynep AKTÜRE - İzmir Yüksek Teknoloji Enstitüsü

Assoc. Prof. Zeynep AKTÜRE, Izmir Institute of Technology

Zeynep Akütre (B.Arch, 1990; M.Sc. in Architecture-Restoration, 1995; Ph.D. in Architecture, 2005 Middle East Technical University [METU] in Ankara, Turkey) is an Associate Professor at Izmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH) Department of Architecture. She currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on architectural design, architectural conservation in archaeological sites and management of heritage sites. She participated in ERASMUS teaching exchange programs and coordinated ERASMUS Intensive Programme projects on archaeological landscapes and urban public spaces.

Her master’s thesis focuses on the preservation-use balance in the Ancient Theatre of Ephesos. Her PhD research proposes a geo-historical interpretation of the architectural characteristics of ancient theatres in Greece and Spain. Her current research and publications, centring on the Mediterranean, are on the UNESCO World Heritage Programme; conservation history, modern uses and digital visualizations of cultural heritage sites and monuments; politics of cultural heritage conservation, archaeological and cultural site management, critical approaches to architectural restoration practices and museum studies. Her research languages are Turkish (native), English (C2), Spanish (B2), Modern Greek (A2), French (A2).

She is an active member of the Turkish National Commission for the UNESCO’s Tangible Cultural Heritage Committee, ICOMOS ISC on Places of Religion and Ritual, ICOMOS Turkey National Committee, Efes Site Management Plan Advisory Board, Turkish Chamber of Architects, Architects' Association 1927, SANART Association of Aesthetics and Visual Culture, Mediterranean Studies Association, and the Society of Architectural Historians, among others.

Dr. Mariëtte VERHOEVEN, Radboud University

Dr. Mariëtte VERHOEVEN, Radboud University

Dr. Mariëtte Verhoeven, Radboud University, Ph.D. (2010), Radboud University Nijmegen, is a research fellow at the Radboud Institute of Culture and History (RICH) and at the Netherlands Institute in Turkey (NIT). Her Ph.D. thesis entitled The Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna. Transformations and Memory was published in 2011 (Turnhout: Brepols). She specializes in the field of early Christian and Byzantine architecture and currently she focuses on the cultural history and transformation of Byzantine heritage in Istanbul. She is the co-editor of three books including Byzantium in dialogue with the Mediterranean. History and Heritage (2019, Leiden: Brill) and her latest article, published in A.C. Geljon and N. Vos (Eds.), Rituals in Early Christianity. Traditions and Transformations (2020, Leiden: Brill), is entitled ‘From Justinian I to Mehmed II. Transformation and Continuity of Rituals and Liturgical Disposition in Hagia Sophia’.