Bio

Nilay Özok-Gündoğan is an Associate Professor of Ottoman and Middle East history. Her research centers on modern state-making, elite formation, property regimes, and intercommunal conflict and coexistence in Ottoman Kurdistan. Her work stands at the junction of interconnected Ottoman, Kurdish, Armenian, and Turkish histories. She also writes about the question of methodology in Kurdish Studies.

Dr. Özok-Gündoğan first book,The Kurdish Nobility in the Ottoman Empire Loyalty, Autonomy and Privilege, narrates the rise and fall of Kurdish nobility in the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth century. Focusing on one noble Kurdish family based in the emirate of Palu, a fortressed town in Kurdistan, it provides the first systematic analysis of the Kurdish hereditary nobility.

She is currently working on a new book, tentatively titled State Formation, Frontier Administration, and Mining: The History of the Keban-Ergani Mines in the Ottoman Empire, 1720-1870 which examines the most significant mining area of the empire in the eighteenth century. Rich with copper, gold, and silver reserves, these mines became the lifeblood of the Imperial Mint and the Ottoman military industry for over a century.  Through the prism of the Keban-Ergani mines, Dr. Özok-Gündoğan’s book uncovers the various ways in which precapitalist forms of mineral extraction for the needs of a warring imperial state transformed the lives of the local population, regional economies, and the environment.

Dr. Özok-Gündoğan’s publications also appeared in the Journal of Social History, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, New Perspectives on Turkey, and edited volumes.

She also serves as the book review editor of the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association.

Recent Publications

Özok-Gündoğan, N. (2020). Counting the Population in an "Unruly" Land: Census-making as Social Process in Ottoman Kurdistan, 1830-1850. Journal of Social History. Journal of Social History, 53, 763–791. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shy097

Özok-Gündoğan, N. (2020). "Can One Save the Voices of the Ordinary Kurds from the Enormous Condescension of Posterity? An Agenda for Social History in Kurdish Historical Writings. In Ümit Kurt, & Ara Sarafian (Eds.), Armenians, Greeks, and Kurds: A People's History of the Ottoman Empire (pp. 95-114). Fresno: Press at California State University

Op-Eds

• Kurdology in Turkey: Barometer of the “Peace Process” (Part 1) (2020)
• Kurdology in Turkey: Barometer of the “Peace Process” (Part 2)
• The Discursive Power of Calls for Papers: Observations of an Ottoman-Kurdish Historian (2019)
• Kurdish Studies in North America: Decolonizing a Field that Does Not Quite Exist, Yet? (2018)

Courses

Graduate

• Ethnic and Religious Minorities in the Modern Middle East
• State in History and Theory
• Ottoman Modernity
• Kurds and Armenians in the Ottoman Empire
• Colonialism and Imperialism in the Middle East

Undergraduate

• The Modern Middle East
• The Ottoman Empire
• Modern Turkey
• The United States and the Middle East
• World War I in the Middle East
• Middle East Research
• Modern Middle East History Through Graphic Novels

Areas of Expertise

Ottoman Empire, Modern Middle East, Comparative Borderlands, State-making, Elite Formation, Peasant and Agrarian Studies, History of Commodities, Kurdish Studies, and Modern Armenian history.

Education

Ph.D. History, Binghamton University

M.A. Modern Turkish History, Boğaziçi University

B.A. Political Science and International Relations, Boğaziçi University