Susanna Cereda is a PhD candidate in the Department of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology at the University of Vienna. She completed her BA and MA at the Sapienza University of Rome, developing an interest in the archaeology of the built environment and in the way space was structured, organized, and used in the past. After spending a six-months period as visiting student at the University of Cambridge, where she approached the study of geoarchaeology and, in the specific, micromorphology, Ms. Cereda moved to Vienna to begin her doctorate. Her ANAMED project forms part of her PhD research, which focuses on the 4th millennium BCE monumental architecture in the site of Arslantepe (Malatya, Türkiye). These structures are investigated by examining the nature and composition of their floors, as well as the spatial organization of the material traces embedded in them, through a combined use of geochemical and micromorphological analyses. Ultimately, her dissertation aims to investigate the way people interacted with these structures in the past: from their construction, use, and maintenance to less tangible aspects, such as the way space was perceived and how it may have, in turn, influenced its occupiers.

Vera Egbers is a PhD candidate in Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology at Freie Universität Berlin. Her study at ANAMED will be dedicated to the interpretive part of her doctoral thesis, in which she uses a sensory archaeology approach to analyze the relationship between Urartu and the Neo-Assyrian Empire (1st mill. BCE). How did the perception and production of space of each sociopolitical unit shape the contours of this often military encounter? Building on the notion of “Thirdspace” developed by the theorists Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja, she asserts that “space” is not a given, but a product. Every society produces its own social space, consisting of a planned idea, material reality, ad also lived experience (or Thirdspace). Using methods from the emergent field of sensory archaeology, she first analyzes the planned experience of the Urartian fortresses Bastam and Ayanis as well as the Neo-Assyrian palaces in Khorsabad and Nineveh (South-West palace) in order to reconstruct the production of space at each site. She then compares and contrasts these culturally specific spatialities, emphasizing how an Assyrian subject experienced the Urartian environment (i.e., as a prisoner of war) and vice versa.

Ayşe Ercan is a PhD candidate at Columbia University, Department of Art History and Archaeology. She holds a BA in Archaeology from Istanbul University (2007) and a MA in Art History and Archaeology from Koç University, Istanbul (2010). Her master’s dissertation provided the first historical account of one of the Byzantine harbors in Constantinople (the Harbor of Theodosius) in Yenikapı, Istanbul through a critical study of the recent archaeological excavations conducted by the Istanbul Archaeological Museums. Prior to entering Columbia’s PhD program with a Fulbright fellowship, she participated in various archaeological excavations, academic programs, and conferences organized by Dumbarton Oaks, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and subsequently by CNRS& IAE, and University of Vienna- Institut für Byzantinistik und Neogräzistik. Her PhD dissertation focuses on the Mangana Quarter in Constantinople, being one of the most significant, albeit the most understudied, building complexes of Medieval Constantinople. Taking a fresh and critical approach to the study of the Mangana Quarter, her research seeks to redefine and re-contextualize an urban landscape in consideration of a broader historical narrative concurrent with wider sociopolitical and religious dynamics in the Byzantine Empire. While in residence at ANAMED, she aims to complete the archival research and conduct fieldwork for her PhD dissertation, which will shed light on the historiography and archaeology of the Mangana neighborhood, in addition to introducing new perspectives to the study of other Byzantine remains in Istanbul.

Matthew Ghazarian is a PhD candidate in Columbia University's Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS), where he works on Ottoman social and economic history. His research focuses on the intersections of natural disaster, humanitarianism, and sectarianism in central and eastern Anatolia between 1839 and 1893. As the Ottoman Empire grappled with the ramifications of a newly-declared religious equality, how did discourses of equality and political belonging coexist with – or even make possible – divisive and exclusionary politics that have persisted to the present?

Hugh Jeffery is studying for the PhD in Classical Archaeology at Lincoln College Oxford. His research interests lie in Middle Byzantine material culture, particularly in western Asia Minor, and his doctoral thesis concerns the archaeology of the settlement at Aphrodisias/Stauropolis during the period AD 800–1300. While at ANAMED, he will be completing this project with the aim of preparing a monograph for publication. His background is in the classical world, having read Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Wadham College Oxford before moving the short distance to Balliol College for an MSt in Classical Archaeology. He has been the recipient of the Mica and Ahmet Ertegün Graduate Scholarship in the Humanities, and currently holds the Shuffrey Scholarship in Architectural History.

Choon Hwee Koh is a PhD candidate in History at Yale University. Her research interests include early modern fiscal reform, comparative empires, and comparative state formation. As an ANAMED fellow, she will be undertaking research on the sprawling Ottoman postal network that connected Constantinople to Cairo and Belgrade to Baghdad. Her primary sources include judicial court records, financial documents, historical chronicles, petitions, and travelogues. She has tentative plans for employing GIS technology on a land journey across Anatolia in order to map the changing routes of the Ottoman postal system. When not working, she may be found watching Bollywood movies, Korean dramas, or cat videos on the Istanbul metro.

Ilgın Külekçi is a PhD candidate in the Architectural History program at Istanbul Technical University. Her doctoral dissertation is based on field studies at the ancient city of Larisa (Buruncuk) in western Anatolia, where an architectural survey conducted by Prof. Turgut Saner (ITU) has been proceeding since 2010 . The visible remains of the site are from the timespan between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. In the Classical periods Larisa was under Persian rule and it presents an almost unique case to study the operational patterns of a western Anatolian city in this turbulent period. In order to understand the settlement structures and the urban principles of the period, she is particularly studying the settlement areas of Larisa. Her research project in ANAMED questions Larisa's settlement model considering the social roles of dwellers and the urban constellation in response to the topography. For a comprehensive analysis, the architectural research will be supported with a look at the socio-political dynamics of the period. A further evaluation within the historical geography of the region – with an emphasis on the Late Bronze Age – will be complementary. Thus, her project aims to reveal urbanization processes at Larisa both within its well-defined geographical-topographical entity in the Classical periods, and in relation with long-term dynamics of earlier periods.

Görkem Özizmirli is a PhD candidate in History department at Boston College. After graduating from Ankara University Faculty of Political Sciences with a double major in International Relations and Radio, Television, and Cinema, he completed his master's thesis at Koç University in 2014 in the department of Comparative Studies in History and Society. He is interested in the material, cultural, and ideological transformation of labor and laborers in the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century, with a special interest in the patterns of political activism and labor consciousness among port and transportation laborers. His project aims to explore the cultural and ideological patterns of labor consciousness instead of attempting to trace the makings of a crystallized ``industrialized class-consciousness.`` His research addresses the social conflicts and labor processes of Istanbul through the eighteenth century’s massive movements of population, new methods of capital accumulation, and changing property relations in order to envision a ``pre-industrialized Ottoman Empire`` through the lens of labor and through the eyes of laborers.

Patrick Willett is a PhD candidate in anthropology at SUNY Buffalo and in archaeology at the University of Leuven. His current research focuses on the long-term dynamic relationships between communities and their surroundings, particularly in economically marginal landscapes such as highlands and mountains. His project at ANAMED will form part of his doctoral dissertation, which will correlate the known settlement history and models of archaeological potential within the territory of ancient Sagalassos in southwest Türkiye, since the middle Holocene with available local and regional paleoenvironmental records. The goal of this research is to assess trends in human impact on the environment, human-environment interactions, and the resilience and sustainability of landscape systems over time, and the relationship between land cover, other landscape features, and settlement patterns in southwest Türkiye during the past several millennia.

Zeynep Yıldız Abbasoğlu is a visiting scholar in Leiden University, who contributes to the project, “Turks, Texts and Territory: Cultural Production and Imperial Ideology in Central Eurasia.” She received her PhD in Islamic History and Arts from Marmara University in 2015. Dr. Abbasoğlu's PhD dissertation “15.yy Herat Müzik Okulu ve Benâî’nin Risâle-i Mûsikî’si” (The Fifteenth-Century Music School of Herat and the Resale-ye Musiqi of Benai), examines musical traditions, musicians, and musical instruments of a Central Asian Timurid court as well as discussions of theory in a contemporary treatise. She is planning to extend her work beyond theoretical considerations to the historical and cultural background of the fourteenth -and fifteenth-century Turco-Persian music tradition. The research that she will undertake at ANAMED aims to examine Maraghi’s story from the perspective of the contemporary political culture, arts patronage, circles of music, the interaction between various cultures, and how modern nations have claimed his cultural legacy.

Gülşah Günata obtained her PhD in Archaeology at Koç University in 2017. Her research interests include the interconnections in the northern Aegean in the Late Bronze Age through the Archaic period, Greek cults, ancient religious practices, and iconography. As an ANAMED fellow, she is working on her publication project: “The Cult of Artemis at Klaros in Relation to the Worship of the Goddess in Western Anatolia and Greece.” This research aims to synthesize issues of religious practices and developments in the areas of western Anatolia, Crete, the Near East, and mainland Greece regarding the cults of Artemis in order to understand her cult at Klaros. This project discusses the differences in the Anatolian form of Artemis when compared to other areas, her position in regards to other deities in the region, and characteristic features of the cults of the goddess in the light of both ancient and modern literary sources. By documenting the evidence for different components of the cult of Artemis at Klaros, including the festivals, ritual practices, and material evidence, and comparing it to other cult centers of the goddess in western Anatolia and Greece, this project intends to place Artemis Klaria in the wider context of ancient religion.

Selim Güngörürler received his PhD from Georgetown University in 2016 with his research on the diplomacy and political relations between the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran from 1639 to 1722. His earlier work focuses on the Ottomans' mid-eighteenth-century diplomacy with the Habsburgs as well as with Russia and Venice. Before ANAMED, he worked at Boğaziçi University as a post-doc fellow on the project OTTOCONFESSION, which aims to explore the fashioning of Sunni orthodoxy and confession-building in the early modern Ottoman Empire. Currently, he is enlarging upon his previous work with the aim of reconstructing the fundamentals of the pre-modern diplomacy of the orient with regard to hierarchy, titulature, international system, delegatory representation, and protocol. He is also interested in classical Persian and Turkish literatures.

Sergios Menelaou has recently obtained his PhD from the Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield and specializes in prehistoric Aegean Archaeology, particularly in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age (EBA) periods. He is particularly interested in the application of an integrated methodology that combines the traditional study of ceramics and the application of scientific analytical techniques (ceramic petrography, scanning electron microscopy), with a special concern for recovering technological information of pottery production, usage, and circulation. He has been a member of the project “The Prehistoric Settlement at Heraion on Samos (Sacred Road)” since 2009, led by the University of Cyprus (Dr O. Kouka) and the German Archaeological Institute at Athens, where his research is focused on the multi-scalar analysis of EBA pottery from the new and older excavations at the same site. His project at ANAMED extends this research towards the contextualisation of Samos and the east Aegean within EBA western Anatolian ceramic developments, especially the southwestern part. Based on preliminary observations obtained through his PhD, this project also involves the macroscopic and microscopic examination of comparative ceramic material from a number of Aegean and Anatolian sites, as well as the petrographic analysis of selected samples from the Neolithic site of Kastro-Tigani on Samos. This research sheds light into a largely neglected geographical area based on a conceptual approach invoking mobility and connectivity.

Müge Özbek received her PhD at the Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, Boğaziçi University (2017). Her research focuses on the interdependence between changes in the everyday lives of lower-class women, the urban life, and gender ideology. As an ANAMED fellow, Dr. Özbek will work on her book manuscript, growing out of her dissertation “Single, Poor Women in Istanbul, 1850–1915: Prostitution, Sexuality, and Female Labor.” The project explores the urban experience of self-supporting women, bringing them into focus as significant agents of urban change and emphasizing the ways they interacted in the contested urban life in Istanbul between 1850 and 1915. The study also suggests a rethinking of some well-established concepts and topics such as urbanization, public order, social policy, and labor with a gendered perspective.

Burhan Ulaş completed his PhD in 2015 with the thesis titled ``Reconstruction of the Origin and Diffusion of Agriculture in the Near East: The Contribution of Morphological, Biometric, and Ethnobotanical Analysis`` at the Sapienza University of Rome. He has been conducting archaeobotanical research at the Mersin-Yumuktepe excavation in scientific cooperation with Lecce-Salentò University (Italy) Archaeobotany Laboratory since 2003. Ulaş carried out various research on macro-botanical plant remnants at the Archaeobotany Laboratory of Tubingen University (Germany) between 2007–2008 within the scope of his master's thesis. At ANAMED, he will conduct a research project titled ``Reappraisal of Istanbul's Prehistoric and Byzantine Periods through Archaeobotanical Analysis.`` This project aims to contribute to scientific discussions within the framework of the historical reconstruction of Anatolia and Europe since Istanbul is a transition/diffusion region between these two different geographical regions as well as two different periods, namely the Prehistoric and Byzantine Periods. Moreover, since the number of archaeobotanical studies concerning the region is limited, this project will have the potential of filling the gap in this regard.

Rula (Shafiq) Baysan is a bioarchaeologist working on human skeletal remains from Anatolia, Türkiye. She obtained her PhD from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London in 2010. Dr. Baysan was a lecturer in Archaeology and Forensic Anthropology at Yeditepe University (Istanbul) for 10 years and is presently an independent scholar. The current research at ANAMED deals with the study of skeletal assemblages from the sites of Tell Atchana (Alalakh) and Karkemish, both located in the south-eastern part of Türkiye, Hatay and Gaziantep respectively. The primary aim of this project is to answer questions of regional diachronic change in diet, growth, and development along with joint diseases, trauma, and population movement of past populations from these two major sites, with special reference to shifts in social and political settings, during the Middle and Late Bronze Age, and Iron II and III periods. Combining and studying these two sites offers the distinct advantage of providing a regional perspective on changes, particularly in relation to the Hittite Empire and the effects its control might have had on the lives of the populations at the two sites.

Suna 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.

Robert Coates-Stephens has been Cary Fellow at the British School at Rome since 2002, where he directs undergraduate and graduate teaching in the topgraphy and archaeology of the ancient city. The broader aim of his project at ANAMED is to understand the impact of ancient art on the medieval imagination, by analyzing the recorded perception of antique sculpture displayed in the post-classical urban environment. During the 6th–12th centuries free-standing statues were hardly produced in the Mediterranean, yet ancient cities remained populated with ancient sculpture. How did the inhabitants react to these ghosts of a vanished culture? Only in Rome and Constantinople may we seek definitive answers, thanks to the survival of contemporary texts and the statues themselves, and only a comparative approach can yield informative links and unforeseen resonances. Not since 1411 has such a study been essayed, when Manuel Chrysoloras, the last great orator of Byzantium, mournfully tried to explain why so few statues had survived in Constantinople, when so many still adorned Rome. The project in Istanbul, which engages with the ````Environment and Society```` research theme, will allow the completion of a monograph on ancient sculpture and the medieval imagination and initiate a focused study of the afterlife of the statue world in Constantinople-Istanbul, whereby the shifting topographical resonances of statue and place in Old and New Rome will be explored through contemporary perceptions.

``Julien Boucly is a PhD student at the School of High Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris) under the supervision of Professor Nathalie Clayer. He is an Associate Researcher at the French Institute for Anatolian Studies (IFEA, Istanbul) and a member of the Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan, and Central Asian Studies (CETOBac, Paris). His research investigates UNESCO World Heritage sites and cultural heritage policies in Türkiye. He questions how Türkiye has recently been very involved in the UNESCO program and the effects of World Heritage candidacy processes over heritage policy-making (discovery, restoration and valorization). World Heritage candidacy processes may foster archaeological excavations, restoration projects, tourism policies, legal protections, cultural inventories, and academic publications. Based on a research methodology in political sociology, his project goes through social and political processes of heritage-making. He joins the interdisciplinary approach recommended by several anthropologists, sociologists, historians, archeologists, and geographers, as he aims to include his work in the field of critical heritage studies.``

Özge Yildiz is a PhD candidate at Harvard University, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Art and Architecture. Her advisor is Gülru Necipoğlu. Her dissertation project focuses on the construction history of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (1609–1617) in the context of the political and social transformations of the seventeenth century.

Deniz Sever Georgousakis holds a PhD in Art History from Koç University. Deniz currently participates in the archaeological excavations in the Küçükyalı ArkeoPark, which is an urban archaeology project located on the Asian side of Istanbul. Her responsibility at the project is to study the metal objects and create a detailed digital database for the study of small finds. Her project in ANAMED is the revision of her doctoral dissertation, “Against All Evil: Byzantine Portable Objects of Private Protection from Türkiye,” and its development into a book manuscript by revising and expanding certain sections. Her research focuses on the concept of apotropaic, spiritual, and/or magico-medical protection and its development in Byzantium over the centuries, a concept reflected in the material world of Byzantium. The integral part of her research explores the function of images and inscriptions on objects of protection. It utilizes the fields of anthropology and art history to understand the connection between images and inscriptions, and their role as mediators of narratives in scriptures and oral traditions. The study of these objects provides an insight into the fears and expectations of Byzantine society and how the Byzantines dealt with their worries in their daily lives.

Nebojša Stanković's research focused on the narthex of Middle Byzantine (9th–12th C.) monastic churches. The narthex’s regular presence and the considerable uniformity of its plan and form suggest that the feature was deemed well-suited for the liturgical and spiritual requirements of coenobitic communities. The study is conceived as an examination of both architecture and written sources, aimed at exploring similarities and differences in the form and function of the narthex between several important monastic centers of the time and within the Stoudite monastic tradition. It is expected that this particular part of the church building preserves architectural embodiments of certain liturgical and other customs characteristic for the main-stream monastic organization of the period. The project explores to what extent function shaped the spatial organization and architectural form, as well as if the organization and form in turn influenced the way services were performed. Furthermore, this study is hoped to help in tracing the mechanisms operating in the transmission of certain architectural forms and spatial habits, but also why some distinct divergences and idiosyncratic developments occurred.

Alba Mazza is a maritime archaeologists, and holds a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Sydney (2017). Her research focuses on the relationship between people and the coastal environment. She is especially interested in understanding how people faced the challenges of living on the shore (such as floods, tsunamis, earthquakes and erosion), and become resilient. Given such an approach, her analysis of the coastal landscape of Mediterranean settlements spans from the Bronze Age to the Late Antiquity, and includes port infrastructures as well as landing spots on the beach. Her project at KUDAR-ANAMED ``The maritime coastal landscape of Aiolian Cyme in Türkiye and Selinus in Sicily. Two sister port cities?`` is a natural outgrowth from her PhD thesis, which dealt with the maritime coastal landscape of Selinus. In that initial study, it was possible to understand that Selinus shares several aspects of the maritime culture and the coastal environment with Aiolian Cyme in Türkiye. Hence, during her fellowship Dr. Mazza will investigate port facilities, with a focus on Cyme’s topography, and material evidence from past underwater investigations. The study of those common maritime archaeological features can reveal us a great degree of archaeological and environmental information, and eventually inform us on respectively missing aspects of the maritime landscape of the two ancient cities. On a site-scale, this study will improve our knowledge Cyme, one of the most important coastal settlement of ancient Anatolia in the Greek, Roman and Late Roman period. More broadly this study, by comparing for the first time Cyme in Türkiye and Selinus in Sicily, offers new keys for understating important topics in today’s maritime archaeology, such as coastal landscape changes, topographical identity of places, connectivity by sea, and cultural interactions.