WELCOME
Sumeyye is an interdisciplinary researcher with a background across the humanities and social sciences. Her journey began in a household where knowledge production is deemed a public duty. Witnessing how scientific language was disseminated to the broader public through journal articles and artistic works, she learned that scientific literacy is a two-way practice. The wider public has much to teach the experts and professionals. Academically, her journey began with Ottoman poetry, decoding scientific, infrastructural and legal terminology in poetic language. This took her into various research areas, ranging from the sociology of religion, political geography to historical sociology and the histories of capitalism and infrastructure.
Education
Expected 2026
University of Oxford
DPhil (PhD) in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, St Catherine's College.
The Arrival of Cars in the Ottoman Mediterranean and the Early Republican Period in Turkey (1850-1930).
2014
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
MA, Islamic Studies (Expertise in histories of Sharia in the Late Ottoman Era, Global histories of Islams and Muslims in the Modern Era, and historical methods in Islamic Studies).
2005
Istanbul University
MA, Ottoman Poetry, Urban and Legal Landscape of Istanbul in the Poetry of Taşlıcalı Yahya (d. 1582)