Mehmet Doğar received his PhD in History at the University of Cambridge in 2025, following undergraduate and master’s studies in International Relations at Middle East Technical University, Ankara. His doctoral research, funded by the Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholarship, examined Turkish-Italian economic and business relations in the 1920s and 1930s. At the BIAA, he is a BIRI Postdoctoral Fellow in the Ottoman Mobilities and Interactions project. His research explores the mobility and networks of Italian industrialists in the late Ottoman Empire, investigating their role in shaping Italian economic expansion and Ottoman-Italian relations in the early twentieth century. Since October 2024, Mehmet has also held a Bye-Fellowship at Homerton College, Cambridge. He was previously a Postgraduate Researcher at the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies, Newnham College, Cambridge (2020-2025). His broader research interests centre on the socioeconomic and diplomatic history of the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic, with a particular focus on relations with Europe and the Mediterranean. He has published on Turkish-Italian relations in the 1930s as well as on the relationship between the state and the press in the early Turkish Republic. He is currently working towards his first monograph, Turkish-Italian Economic Relations, 1919–1939: Actors, Practices, and Diplomacy.
Fields of Expertise: Late Ottoman and Early Turkish Republican Economic History; Ottoman and Turkish Foreign Policy; Italian Imperialism under Fascism; Early-Twentieth Century Mediterranean History.