In this piece, I first introduce Pera’s nineteenth-century sewers as a gateway
to exploring the district’s interconnections with its surrounding geographies,
which requires a close study of infrastructural plans. I then propose the
methodological virtues of juxtaposing these with insurance maps, frequently
utilized in the conventional his…[Read more]

Review of Peter H. Christensen, Germany and the Ottoman Railways: Art, Empire, and Infrastructure. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

In the Arabic-speaking mahjar (diaspora), the plight of the working poor was the focus of women’s philanthropy. Scholarship on welfare relief in the interwar Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian diaspora currently situates it within a gendered politics of benevolence. This article reconsiders that frame and argues for a class-centered reassessment o…[Read more]

This course explores histories of forced migration in the Middle East and South Asia during the twentieth century. Looking at the role of colonialism, partition, and social unrest in driving the movement of refugees, IDPs, and stateless peoples, we examine how everyday struggles for refugee protection, asylum, and citizenship influence regional…[Read more]

This conference, co-organized by the Istanbul Research Institute
and Pera Museum, through local and international collaborations, seeks to offer new
insights on the complex layers of Istanbul’s urban landscape. It brings together innovative
studies in the fields of environmental history, political ecology, and critical art studies t…[Read more]

The institutional development of many post-Communist countries remains a daunting task. Since the early 1990s, some of them have managed to achieve visible results in eradicating corruption and enhancing the effectiveness and accountability of public institutions, while others still struggle with several systemic problems. Since regaining its…[Read more]