Ghazarian, Matthew

Columbia University

Research Title: Famine in a Time of Uncertainty: Food Aid and Sectarianism in Anatolia, 1839–1893

Mr. 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?