Kayhan Elbirlik, Leyla

Özyeğin University

Research Title: Ottoman Family, Women, and Marriage in Early Modern Istanbul, 1750–1920

Dr. Kayhan–Elbirlik holds MA and PhD degrees from Harvard University (History and Middle Eastern Studies, 2005 and 2013). Dr. Elbirlik’s most recent publications include “The Emotional Bond between Early Modern Children and Parents: A Case Study of Sünbülzade’s ‘Ideal’ Child” in Children and Childhood in the Ottoman Empire (14th–20th Century) (Edinburgh University Press, 2021, eds. Fruma Zachs and Gülay Yılmaz); “Family and Neighborhood Lives” in Early Modern Istanbul. Brill Companion Series on Early Modern Cities (Brill, 2021, eds. Çiğdem Kafescioğlu and Shirine Hamadeh). Dr. Elbirlik collaborated in the EU Horizon 2020 project entitled PLOTINA during 2016–2020 at Özyeğin University. She is on the executive board of AMECYS (Association for Middle Eastern Childhood and Youth Studies), SES Equality and Solidarity Association, and a member of MESA (Middle East Studies Association), AHA (American Historical Association), and Global Relations Forum. Dr. Elbirlik received an ARIT-NEH grant in Summer 2020. At ANAMED she is working on her monograph which traces the history of the marital bond and its dissolution between the late eighteenth and early twentieth-century in Ottoman Istanbul. She focuses on exploring the actions of women in court, in their patterns of registering marriage and divorce-related settlements to protect their rights in the public sphere. Dr. Elbirlik is a faculty member at Özyeğin University. 

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