Dr. Budak works at the intersection of Mediterranean, Ottoman, Islamic, Byzantine, and Renaissance studies in the late medieval and early modern periods. His interdisciplinary research blends intellectual, cultural, and social history, utilizing diverse source materials in a multitude of languages and formats, including neglected or unedited works surviving in manuscripts, archival documents, and material objects.
His dissertation (2024) offered new material and novel methodological insights into this expansive landscape. His research unearthed and reconstructed underexplored networks of intellectuals and ideas during the transitional phase from the Middle Ages to the early modern era, transcending conventional boundaries in current historiography. It encompassed a large spectrum of themes and subjects, such as the entanglement of languages, courts, and mobility, as well as Platonism, Illuminationsim, Sufism, and Humanism. The early fruits of the dissertation research and Budak’s side interests have already appeared in several articles. He is currently working on two book manuscripts: one about the complex structures in the broader Mediterranean world and another on Byzantine scholars and Greek materials at the Ottoman court. At ANAMED, he will concentrate on exploring the Anatolian aspects of his expansive project and conduct research at Istanbul’s manuscript libraries and archives in an attempt to illustrate that the intellectual history of Anatolia was part of a larger interconnected landscape from Islamicate centers of learning to Byzantium and Renaissance Italy.