Teaching and Studying Turkish Politics through Literature (second edition)

Fulvio Bertuccelli is Adjunct Professor of History of Islamic Countries at the University of Bologna. Fulvio 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. 

Rosita D’Amora is Associate Professor at Department of Oriental Studies at Sapienza Università di Roma. Rosita teaches Turkish Language and Literature and History of the Ottoman Empire. Her research interests range from Ottoman social history to contemporary Turkish literature, addressing issues related to different forms of representation and auto-representation of Ottoman and Turkish society. She is the translator in Italian of some modern classic of Turkish literature and the author of Corso di Lingua Turca (Hoepli, 2012) used as a textbook for learning Turkish in all Italian universities. Her latest publication includes: Gift Exchanging Practices between the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Ottoman Empire: ‘Cose Turche’ and Strange Animals, Cromohs, 2022, Vol. 24: 108-122 and Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Hezārfenn and the Coffee: Texts, Documents and Translations, Oriente Moderno, 2020, 100: 107-120.

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. 

Fabio Grassi is Associate 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, 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; La fine del potere ottomano. L'ultimo sultano, l'ultimo califfo, gli ultimi Gran Visir, Bologna, Marietti1820, 2024.

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). 

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.

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, Romania, 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.