History Department’s İpek Yosmaoğlu elected as President of Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association

Historian İpek Yosmaoğlu has been elected the next President of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association – the field’s flagship professional association.

The Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association is a private, non-political organization of scholars, students, and other persons interested in the field. According to their website, the Association has existed since 1971 to “promote high standards of scholarship and instruction. . .facilitate communication among its members. . .and to promote international, scholarly cooperation.” The Association also publishes the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association.

Yosmaoğlu is an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern and a historian of the late Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey. In addition to this new role, she also serves as Director of the Buffett Institute’s Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program.

Yosmaoğlu is currently working on a book, Regimes of Violence: War, Militarism, and the Making of the Turkish Nation, 1878-1939, that “reconsiders the origins of Turkish nationhood through a study of demographic change and inter-communal relations.” Her research focuses on War and Empire in History, driven by questions of why and how violence is committed and condoned.