Ottoman Mobilities and Interactions

Location Türkiye, the Middle East/West Asia, Greece, North and East Africa

Years 2025-2026

Director Dr Peter Cherry
BIAA

Funding BIRI

Research Summary

The project investigates the dynamics of mobility—of people, ideas, objects, cultural/artistic forms and institutions—across the Ottoman Empire.

Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches and transregional perspectives, we aim to deepen our understanding of how mobility shaped imperial governance, social transformations, cultural production and cross-border interactions within and beyond Ottoman domains. Speficically, the project is interested in the long nineteenth century and the following themes:

  • Pilgrimage, exile and religious journeys
  • Circulation of manuscripts, artworks, translations and luxury goods
  • Networks of merchants, scholars, writers and artisans
  • Forced migrations, slavery and displacement
  • Urban and rural mobility patterns
  • Transportation and technologies of mobility
  • Borderlands, diasporas and inter-imperial relations
  • Travel and tourism
NEW: Ottoman Mobilities and Interactions Symposium Completed Heritage Türkiye Podcast Episode feat Dr Selim Sırrı Kuru Heritage Türkiye Podcast Episode feat Dr Ayşe Ozil

Research Director

Dr Peter Cherry

BIAA

Peter Cherry received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh in 2017. He joined the BIAA in 2017-18 as a Postdoctoral Fellow. He was Assistant Professor of Comparative and World Literature at Bilkent University from 2018-2021, Visiting Lecturer at the University of West London from 2021-22, and worked as Communications and External Relations Officer for an NGO in Moldova from 2022-2023 before taking up the post of Assistant Director. His first book, Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film: Transcultural Identity and Migration in Britain, was published by IB Tauris in 2021. He has also published on Turkish literature and cinema.