NIT Newsletter 2026 – 1

NIT Fellowships

NIT 2026 Spring Fellows

In the spring of 2026, the NIT library welcomed six fellows working on a range of topics from zooarchaeology to Sufism. As always, fellows presented their findings in a ‘library talk’ for the NIT community, and wrote a blog post for NIT’s blog.

Sara Hutchinson (University of Groningen) focuses on animal management and human-animal relationships at Late Bronze Age Troy (VIIa/b) through zooarchaeological data in her project, The Political Economy of Late Bronze Age Troy (VIIa/b): A Zooarchaeological Perspective on Local Economies. By analyzing largely unstudied faunal assemblages, she aims to reconstruct local economic organization and environmental adaptation in Western Anatolia during a period of major cultural disruption and collapse.

Laura van Alfen (Leiden University), in her research Secularizing at Home, Sacralizing Abroad: Turkey’s Use of Sufi Heritage in Domestic and Transnational Contexts, compares how Sufi sacred sites in Turkey and Albania have been transformed into heritage monuments, national symbols, and diplomatic tools. She investigates how political systems alternately contain, activate, and instrumentalize sacred space and religious authority.

Rebeca Ramos Vital (Radboud University) compares the ethics and spatial dimensions of tourism in Brazilian favelas and in marginalized Istanbul neighborhoods such as Tarlabaşı and Balat. It analyzes how poverty and urban inequality are aestheticized for touristic consumption across distinct racial, historical, and socio-political contexts.

Check King Tay (Leiden University) examines the British Seamen’s Hospital in nineteenth-century Istanbul as a site of shifting identities, exploring how legal and urban reforms reshaped patient demographics, staff relations, and institutional growth in his project, Placing Identities at the British Seamen’s Hospital in Istanbul, 1855-1904. It investigates tensions between British merchants and consular staff, Ottoman property laws, and how financial surpluses paradoxically failed to enable hospital expansion until 1904. You can read his blog post about his research stay in Istanbul here.

Burak Fıçı‘s (Erasmus University) project, Rebuilding Narratives: Urban Discourse and Civic Response in 18th-Century Valencia and Izmir, compares how public opinion and civic engagement developed in Valencia, Spain, and İzmir, Ottoman Empire, following the earthquakes of 1748 and 1739 respectively. Challenging Habermasian models, Burak explores how monarchical and confessional Southern European empires fostered public negotiation through political discourse, local elites, citizenship, and religious institutions. You can read Burak’s report on his research here.

Ecem Coşan (University of Groningen), in her PhD project, Building a Silk Archive: Tracing Labor, Space, and Non-Human Actors Across the Mediterranean Silk Networks (17th–19th Century), examines how silk production transformed rural landscapes, labor structures, and ecosystems across Bursa, Como, and Mount Lebanon. Moving beyond silk as a luxury commodity, Ecem explores mulberry monocultures, village reorganization, gendered labor, and environmental impact, tracing how human and non-human actors shaped Mediterranean sericulture networks over three centuries.

Recent and Upcoming Activities

SIB-Groningen Student Association’s Visit

On 13 April, we hosted twenty students from the SIB-Groningen Student Association who visited NIT. We informed them about NIT’s activities and programs and the NIT Intern Niek presented his ongoing research on the Dekkers family buried at the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery.

Hubs, networks and trajectories. The making of global cooperation in the humanities in Istanbul and beyond Joint Lecture Series

A new lecture series entitled Hubs, networks and trajectories. The making of global cooperation in the humanities in Istanbul and beyond, exploring global cooperation in the humanities, was launched on February 12, 2026. This joint lecture series is organized in partnership with the Liszt Institute the Hungarian Cultural Center, the American Research Institute (ARIT), the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAInst), the Institut français d’études anatoliennes (IFEA), the Netherlands Institute in Turkey, the Orient-Institut Istanbul, and the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII).

The inaugural lecture of this series was presented by Gábor Fodor, entitled A Scientific Hub of Central Powers in the WWI’s Ottoman Capital: The Hungarian Science Initiative in Constantinople at the Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Center in Istanbul. The lecture series will continue throughout the year, featuring many lectures, including one by Ozan Özavcı (Utrecht University) on The Great Games of Pandemics. Sanitary Internationalism in the Middle East and North Africa, 1792-1942, on June 11. Further details about the lecture series will be available on NIT’s website soon.