Teaching and Studying Turkish Politics through Literature

Fulvio Bertuccelli is Adjunct Professor of History of Islamic Countries at the University of Bologna and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in History of Eastern Europe at Sapienza Università di Roma. Silvio holds a PhD from the University of Naples “L’ Orientale”; he successfully defended his dissertation “Kemalism and Socialism in the Turkish Left (1960-1971)” in July 2013. Among his recent publications are: Il movimento socialista in Turchia (1960-1971). Ideologia e politica tra due colpi di Stato, Aracne, Roma 2023; (co-edited with Mihaela Gavrila and Fabio L. Grassi), Minorities and Diasporas in Turkey. Public images and issues in education Sapienza Università Editrice, Roma 2023. 

Konstantinos Gogos is Assistant Professor at the Department of Turkish Studies and Modern Asian Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He teaches undergraduate courses and postgraduate seminars on the Islamist movement in Turkey, Muslims in Europe, Geopolitics of Turkey and the Middle East, and Turkish-Greek translation. His research interests focus on Turkish Islamist intellectuals, Muslims and Islam in Europe, and the relationship between literature and politics. His latest book is: Reading Turkish Islamist Writers: Kısakürek, Bulaç, Dilipak (Peter Lang, 2020).

Luz Gómez is Professor of Intellectual History of Islam at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her research is focused on the Islamic discourse on power and ideology. Her latest books are: Salafismo. La mundanidad de la pureza (2021), Diccionario de islam e islamismo (2019), Entre la sharía y la yihad. Una historia intelectual del islamismo (2018). Luz has translated 13 literary books from Arabic and won the Spanish National Translation Award (2012) for her version of Mahmud Darwish’s En presencia de la ausencia (Fi hadrat al-giyab). She is a senior analyst for the Spanish newspaper El País. https://elpais.com/autor/luz_gomez_garcia/a  

Helena González Vaquerizo is Associate Professor at the Department of Classical Philology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Helena teaches Ancient and Modern Greek language and Greek literature. Her research focuses on Modern Greek Studies and Classical Reception. She is also academic secretary for the University Institute of Women Studies (UAM). Among her recent publications are the edition with Luis Unceta of the book En los márgenes del mito. Hibridaciones del mito clásico en la cultura de masas contemporánea (Catarata/UAM-Ediciones, 2022), and the paper «Kazantzakis’s Odyssey: A (Post)modernist Sequel», Journal of Modern Greek Studies 39 (2021: 349–377). 

Fabio Grassi is Associate Professor (enabled as full professor) of History of International Relations at Sapienza Università di Roma, Dept. of History, Anthropology, Religions, Art History, Media and Performing Arts. He is also Scientific Counselor of the Turkey Desk Project; Counselor for Iranian and Turkic Countries. He is the author of more than 100 publications. Among them are: Atatürk. Il fondatore della Turchia moderna [Atatürk. The founder of Modern Turkey], Roma, Salerno, 2008, new edition 2020; A New Homeland. The massacre of the Circassians, their Exodus to the Ottoman Empire, their place in modern Turkey, Istanbul Aydın University Publications, 2018. 

Seda Gürkan is Assistant Professor at Leiden University’s Institute of Security and Global Affairs. She is also an Affiliated Fellow and Professor at the Department of Political Science and the Institute for European Studies, at Université Libre de Bruxelles. Her teaching and research interests include EU foreign policy (with a focus on the Eastern neighbourhood, human rights, enlargement, EU-Turkey relations), European integration theories, parliamentary diplomacy (European Parliament) and emotions in international relations. Her latest publications include a co-authored volume ‘Theorising the Crises of the European Union’ (Routledge, 2021) and a Special Issue on the ‘Emotions in EUropean Foreign Policy’ (Global Affairs, 2021).  

Darina Martykanova is Associate Professor at the Department of Modern History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She graduated in Turcology - History and Culture of Islamic Countries of the Charles University, Prague. She worked at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and at the Centre d' études turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et centrasiatiques (CETOBaC) of the EHESS, Paris. Darina is author of Reconstructing Ottoman Engineers. Archaeology of a Profession (1789-1914), Pisa 2010, and several publications on the transnational dimensions of Ottoman history of science and technology.

Carlo Pallard is currently Research Fellow at Sapienza Università di Roma and manages the Sapienza International Office in Istanbul. Carlo is a historian of political thought. His main research interest is political ideologies in modern Turkey. He obtained his PhD in 2021 at the University of Turin with a thesis on the relationship between Islamism and ethnic nationalism in contemporary Turkish conservative thought. 

Silvana Rachieru is Associate Professor at the Faculty of History, University of Bucharest, and Director of the Center for Turkish Studies. She holds a PhD in History (2010, UB); MA in History (1998, Central European University Budapest). She is a Historian of the Ottoman Empire, with expertise in modern social and diplomatic history. Silvana has served at the Romanian Cultural Institute in Istanbul (as project coordinator, deputy director, director / 2006-2015). She is the author of Ottoman Diplomats and Subjects in the Old Kingdom. Ottoman-Romanian Relations between 1878-1908 (Romanian, Iasi, 2018), and has published articles on Romanian-Ottoman diplomatic relations after 1878, the Ottoman perspective on the modernization of Romania and modern gender history.

Carmen Rodríguez López is Associate Professor at the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies, and Delegate for Internationalization of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She holds a degree in Political Science and Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid and a PhD from the UAM. She has conducted predoctoral and postdoctoral research stays at Boğazici University (Istanbul) and has taught at Istanbul Technical University on the formation of the Republic of Turkey. Her research interests are focused on Turkey´s domestic and foreign policy.

Efthymia (Efi) Kanner is Associate Professor at the Department of Turkish Studies and Modern Asian Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her research focuses on topics of social history of the Late Ottoman Empire and Turkey such as micro-history, history of education and philanthropy, history of social movements, and gender relations. She is the author of Men and Women in the Modernization Adventure. Turkish Modernization from a Gender Perspective (Greek, Herodotos, Athens 2021); and Editor of the volume Turkey: Violence, Resistance and Politics in a Time of Crisis. Social and Political Reactions towards Gender-based Violence (Greek, Herodotos, Athens 2018).

Maria Mavropoulou is a retired Assistant Professor of Turkish language and Literature, at the Department of Turkish Studies and Modern Asian Studies, National and Kapodistrian Universities of Athens, where she was teaching courses on modern Turkish literature,  introduction to Turkish Literature, and seminars on Turkish-Greek translation. Her research interests focus on Turkish language teaching, Turkish literature, and especially the works of Halide Edip Adıvar. Among her publications is the 2-volume Greek translation and edition of Mustafa Kemal’s “Νutuk: the Great Speech” (Papazisis, Athens 2009).

Aristotelis Mitraras is Assistant Professor of Turkish Language and Literature at the Department of Turkish Studies and Modern Asian Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His research interests include topics in the history of Turkish literature, contemporary literary currents in Turkish poetry and novels, comparative literature (Turkish and Greek), history and development of Turkish theater under the influence of Western theater. His publications include: An Anthology of New Turkish Literature [4 volumes] (Greek, Papazisis publ., Athens 2014-2017); The Nationalist Triptych Turkification-Islamization-Modernization in Ziya Gökalp’s Poetry–A Poetic Tour (Greek, Papazisis, Athens 2012).

Christina Sanlioglou is teaching staff and a PhD candidate at the Department of Turkish Studies and Modern Asian Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and a certified Turkish language teacher. At the Department she teaches courses on Turkish as a foreign language, morphology and syntax of Turkish, and Turkish literature. Her research interests include: Turkish as a foreign language, contrastive language analysis, second/foreign language acquisition, translation and literature, empathy in literature and narrative empathy. Her PhD thesis title is “Empathy for the Asia Minor Catastrophe in Yaşar Kemal’s Work”.

Eleni Sella is Professor of General Linguistics at the Department of Turkish Studies and Modern Asian Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and Chair of the Department. Her teaching and research interests include issues of bilingualism or multilingualism, contrastive linguistic analysis, second language acquisition, bilingual-minority education, issues of national identity and language, as well as theoretical and didactic issues of translation. Her publications include: Bilingualism, National Identity and Minority Languages. (Greek, Leimon, Athens 2016); Bilingualism and Society (Greek, Proskinio, Athens 2001/2007).