List of Contributors

Margareta Aslan is a researcher and tutor of Turkish language and culture at the
Institute of Turkology and Central Asian Studies of the Babeș-Bolyai University,
Cluj-Napoca (Romania). Her fields of research include the Romanian-Ottoman
relations, Oriental studies and the history of migrations. Her most recent publication
is Atitudini civice și imaginea Imperiului Otoman ȋn societatea transilvȃneanȃ ȋn
perioada Principatului (1541- 1688) [Civic Attitudes and the Image of the Ottoman
Empire in the Transylvanian Society of the Principality Period (1541- 1688)] (2015).

Arkadiusz Blaszczyk is research assistant and PhD student at the University of

Giessen. His fields of research include the history of the Crimean Khanate as well as
the entanglements of the Ottoman Empire, Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy/Russia, the
history of violent groups in the Black Sea steppes, trade relations across and around
the Black Sea as well as the culinary history of. (post-)Ottoman Europe. His
publications include “Von duchińszczyzna bis zur Sonnensprachtheorie. Über die
Verflechtungen zwischen polnischem Anti-Russismus und türkischem
Nationalismus,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteluropa-Foschung 65 (2016), and “A Game of
Thrones? Krimkhane, Warlords und die Angst vor Absetzung in den osmanisch-
krimtatarischen Beziehungen,” (Zeitschrift für Ostmitteluropa-Forschung,
forthcoming).

Ali Çaksu is associate professor at the Department of Philosophy at the Yıldız

Technical University, Istanbul. His fields of research are political philosophy and the
philosophy of history. Representative publications are Bir Başka Açıdan Aristoteles
[Aristotle from a Different Perspective] (2013); Ibn Khaldun and Philosophy:
Causality in History” in the Journal of Historical Sociology 30:1 (2017) and “Devletin
Emrine Tanrı Emri Olarak İtaat”: Thomas Hobbes’ta Sivil Din” [The State’s
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Command as Divine Command: Civil Religion in Thomas Hobbes], Kutadgu Bilig 17

(2010).

Stefan Detchev is associate professor in History at South-West University of

Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. His field of research includes political ideologies and public
spheres, Bulgarian nationalism, historiography, history of masculinity and sexuality,
history of food and cuisine. Representative Publications are “‘Procession of
civilization’ – The First Bulgarian Istanbul Cookbook from 1870 and the Road to
Modernity.” in Kent Schull and Suraiya Faroqhi, eds., Rethinking Late Ottoman
Civilization (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming), “Between Slavs
and Old Bulgars: ‘Ancestors,’ ‘Race’ and Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century” in
Manufacturing Middle Ages. Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-
Century Europe (2013), “Who are the Bulgarians? ‘Race,’ Science and Politics in fin-
de-siècle Bulgaria” in We, the people. Politics of National Peculiarities in South-East
Europe (2009).

Ágnes Drosztmér is a PhD at the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European

University. Her fields of research are the early Hungarian literature (narrative poetry,
self-narratives and travel literature), orality-literacy studies, sixteenth century cultural
history, and Christian- Muslim relations. Representative Publications include “Self-
fashioning in the Song Book of Ferenc Wathay - Ideas and ideals of Authorship in
Ottoman Captivity.” in Türkenkriege und Adelskultur in Ostmitteleuropa vom 16. bis
zum 18. Jahrhundert. (2014). “The Good Fowler as a World Conqueror: Images of
Suleyman the Magnificent in Early Modern Hungarian Literary Practice.” in Practices
of Coexistence. Constructions of the Other on Early Modern Perceptions (2017) and
“The Captivity of Mihály Szilágyi and the Love of the Princess: Evaluating Parallels
between a Hungarian and an Ottoman Turkish Romance.” in Identity and Culture in
Ottoman Hungary (2017).

Suraiya Faroqhi is a professor of history at the Bilgi University in Istanbul and a

specialist of Ottoman economic, social, religious and cultural history. Representative
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Publications are A Cultural History of the Ottomans: The imperial elite and its artefacts
(2016); Animals and People in the Ottoman Empire (2010, as editor), Artisans of Empire:
Crafts and Craftspeople under the Ottomans (2009). Bread from the Lion´s Mouth:
Artisans struggling for a livelihood in Ottoman cities (2015); Travel and Artisans in
the Ottoman Empire: Employment and Mobility in the Early Modern Era (2014). She
is the editor of The Cambridge History of Turkey (vol. 3, 2006) and co- editor (with
Kate Fleet) of vol. 2 in the same series. In 2014 Suraiya Farouqi received the World
Congress of Middle East Studies (WOCMES) Award for outstanding contribution to
Middle Eastern studies.

Vjeran Kursar is assistant professor at the Department of History & Department of

Hungarian, Jewish, and Turkish Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences, University of Zagreb. His fields of research cover the cultural, legal,
religious and social history of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans in the early
modern period. Representative publications include “Being an Ottoman Vlach. On
Vlach Identity (ies), Role and Status in Western Parts of the Ottoman Balkans (15th-
18th Centuries),” Journal of the Center for Ottoman Studies - Ankara University, 34
(2013), “Non-Muslim communal divisions and identities in the early modern Ottoman
Balkans and the millet system theory,” in Power and Influence in South-Eastern
Europe, 16-19th century (2013), and “Bosanski franjevci i njihovi predstavnici na
osmanskoj Porti [Bosnian Franciscans and Their Representatives at the Ottoman
Porte],” Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju 60, 2011.

Castilia Manea-Grgin is senior research fellow at the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social
Sciences and professor at the Department of Romance Studies at the Faculty of
Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. She is the president of
the Croatian National Committee of the AIESEE (Association Internationale d´Études
du Sud- Est Européen). Her field of research is the intellectual and religious history
of Romania and Croatia in the late medieval and early modern period and Romania in
the European civilization context. Her publications include Povijest karaševskih
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Hrvata u rumunjskom Banatu (16.- 18. Stoljeće) [The History of the Carashevian
Croats of the Romanian Banat, Sixteenth – Eighteenth Centuries] (2012); “Wallachian
and Moldavian Boyars in the Travel Writings of two Dubrovnik-born Authors, Ruđer
Bošković and Stjepan Rajčević (18th Century),” in Revue de l´Association
internationale d´études du sud- est européen (2010).

Mary Neuburger is a professor of history, the Director of the Center for Russian,
East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREEES), and the Chair of Slavic and Eurasian
Studies at the University of Texas of Austin. She is the author of The Orient Within:
Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria (2004),
and Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria (2012). Dr.
Neuburger is also the co-editor with Paulina Bren of Communism Unwrapped:
Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe (2012) and has authored numerous articles
on Bulgarian history. She is currently working on a cultural history of food in Bulgaria
and is co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary History.

Christoph Neumann is professor of Turkish Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-

University Munich. Since 2017, he is chair of the Institute for History and Culture of
Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. He is part of the DFG Research Group “Urban
Ethics” as senior member and is on the Academic Board of the Southeast Europe
Association (Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft –SOG) and the Tanpınar Edebiyat
Araştırmaları ve Uygulama Merkezi [Tanpınar Centre for Studies and Activities in
Literature], Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi, Istanbul. His field of research
covers the culture and history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. Respresentative
publications are Kleine Geschichte der Türkei, co-authored with Klaus Kreiser (2003);
“Commemoration, Trauma, Taboo: Art in Turkey and the Annihilation of the
Armenians.” in Re-Orientierung: Kontexte zeitgenössischer Kunst in der Türkei und
unterwegs (2017). The “Catalogue of the Ottoman Manuscripts in the National
Library, Prague” is forthcoming.
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Burak Onaran is an associate professor at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University

(Istanbul), Department of Sociology. He received his Ph.D. in history from the
EHESS (Paris) in 2009. His main areas of interest are the political and cultural history
of late Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey, history of food and gastronomy.
He published two books namely: Détrôner le sultan: Deux conjurations à l'époque
des réformes ottomanes: Kuleli (1859) et Meslek (1867), published in 2013, and
Mutfaktarih: Yemeğin Politik Serüvenleri [History (in the) Kitchen: The Political
Adventures of Food] (2015).

Aylin Öney Tan is one of the leading Turkish Kitchen authors, Culinary Researcher,
Gastronomy Guide and Leader of Slow Food Ankara, editor of Cumhuriyet and
winner of the Sophie Coe Award for food history in 2008. She has contributed to
several international reference books, most recently The Oxford Companion to
Cheese, and A Taste of Sun & Fire: Gaziantep Cookery. She writes the column "Fork
& Cork" for the Hurriyet Daliy News. Originally an architect specializing in
conservation, she has also served as project manager for the World Bank Turkey's
Cultural Heritage Project.

Maya Petrovich is a research associate at Oxford University within the framework

of the ERC project, Nomadic Empires: A World-Historical Perspective. Her areas of
interest include many aspects of medieval and early modern global history,
particularly in the context of post-Mongol reemergence of Islamic empires and their
interactions across the Indian Ocean. While her main focus is textual and linguistic,
she has also worked on questions of material culture, especially textiles. Publications
include Indijski vrt (2014), "Uncanny Beloveds and the Return of the Repressed:
Ottoman Encounters with the Qypchak Steppe" in La Revue des Mondes Musulmans
et de la Méditerranée (2017) and "Horse Merchants, Valiant Youths and Caliphs:
Reading Mahmud Gavan" (forthcoming in conference proceedings). A monograph on
Anatolian mercenaries in India, The Rumis: The History of a Military Diaspora, is in
preparation, as well as a second book of poetry, Sa dna bunara (2018).
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Stefan Rohdewald is professor of Southeastern European History at the University

of Giessen. He focuses on urban history, discourses of remembrance,
transconfessionality and entanglements in sport, technics and science between Eastern
and Western Europe. His publications include ‘Vom Polocker Venedig.‘ Kollektives
Handeln sozialer Gruppen in einer Stadt zwischen Ost- und Mitteleuropa (2005),
Götter der Nationen. Religiöse Erinnerungsfiguren in Serbien, Bulgarien und
Makedonien bis 1944 (2014), as co-editor: Sport zwischen Ost und West (with Arié
Malz and Stefan Wiederkehr, 2007); Lithuania and Ruthenia. Studies of a
Transcultural Communication Zone (with David Frick and Stefan Wiederkehr, 2007);
Das osmanische Europa. Methoden und Perspektiven der Frühneuzeitforschung zu
Südosteuropa (2014, with Andreas Helmedach, Markus Koller, Konrad Petrovszky).
Since 2017, he is speaker of the priority program Transottomanica funded by the
German Research Foundation (DFG).

Özge Samancı is a historian whose research interests include Ottoman and Turkish
food history and culture. Samancı is associate professor at the department of
Gastronomy and Culinary Arts at Ozyeğin University in Istanbul. She is the author of
publications including “Culinary Consumption Patterns of the Ottoman Elite during
the First Half of the 19th Century” in Illuminated Table, the Prosperous House (2003),
“Pilaf and Bouchées: The Modernization of Official Banquets at the Ottoman Palace
in the Nineteenth Century” in Royal Taste (2011), “Food Studies In Ottoman-Turkish
Historiography,” in Writing Food History: A Global Perspective (2012), “Les Sens
symboliques du pain dans la culture ottomane,” in Food & History (2009), and several
articles on Ottoman culinary culture in Yemek ve Kültür, a Turkish journal about food
culture where she is a member of the editorial committee. She is also the co-editor of
Turkish Cuisine (2008), an inclusive book about the Turkish culinary culture. Her last
book entitled as La Cuisine d’Istanbul au 19e siècle was published in France in 2015.