We are very pleased that Nilay Özok-Gündogan, a specialist in Ottoman and modern Middle East history, is joining our department. Dr. Özok-Gündogan's major research project concerns the Kurdish principalities in the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. Her work emphasizes questions of state-making, changing property regimes, and inter-ethnic relations in comparative imperial peripheries. Her recent publications include “Ruling the Periphery, Governing the Land: The Making of the Modern Ottoman State in Kurdistan, 1840-1870” in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East and the entry on the Ottoman Empire in Wiley's Encyclopedia of Empire. She has published numerous Turkish translations of English-language academic works. Dr. Özok-Gündogan received her Ph.D. from Binghamton University, where she worked under the late Donald Quataert, and taught at Denison and Mardin Artuklu University before coming to FSU.