Çağaptay, Suna 

University of Cambridge – Bahçeşehir University

Research Title: Concealed Motion: Buildings, Builders, and Patrons during the Post-Seljuk Scramble

Dr.Çağaptay is an assistant professor of architectural history and archaeology at Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul, where her research focuses on architectural production and urbanism in the proto-Ottoman eastern Mediterranean. In particular, she examines the circulation and translation of Byzantine and Latin architectural techniques and forms in Islamic contexts. Since summer of 2009, she has been leading an unprecedented archaeological and cultural heritage management project in Bursa with the goal of reconstructing the city’s historical strata. Her work has been supported by institutions ranging from Dumbarton Oaks, to the Barakat Foundation, to MIT’s Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture. She holds a PhD in architectural history and theory from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (2007) and an MA (2001) and BA (1998) from Bilkent University, Ankara. She was a visiting postdoctoral fellow from 2017 to 2019 at the University of Cambridge and Trinity College, where she worked for the ERC-funded Impact of the Ancient City Project organized by Prof. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill and Elizabeth Key Fowden, aiming to study the afterlives of ancient cities in the Eastern Mediterranean. Currently, she is writing a book, tentatively titled ““Concealed Motion: Buildings, Builders, and Patrons during the Post-Seljuk Scramble. Examining the patterns of cultural transition from Christianity into Islam in medieval Anatolia and its reflection on the built environment, this book is the focus of her research while holding a senior fellowship at ANAMED. Her second book, entitled ““The First Ottoman Capital: The Religious, Architectural, and Social History of Bursa““, is under contract with I.B. Tauris and slated for publication in May 2019. Dr. Çağaptay’s previous work has appeared in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Muqarnas, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies Journal, Speculum, EI3, and the Turkish Studies Review.