Focusing on Türkiye and the Black Sea region as a crossroads and as a distinctive creative and cultural hub in both global and neighbourhood perspectives, the BIAA funds research that falls within its Strategic Research Initiatives (SRIs). These SRIs reflect current trends in the international and UK academic communities within the fields of Archaeology and Related Disciplines, Cultural Heritage Management, and Ottoman and Contemporary Turkish Studies.
Türkiye and the Black Sea region presents an ideal opportunity for exploring and understanding climate development and the history of global environmental change, as well as the ways in which past societies have responded to and adapted to environmental change. The natural environment such as lake sediments, tree-rings, speleothems and peat deposits represent valuable ‘archives’ of environmental change which have been under-explored in the region. Cultural, archaeological and ethnographic narratives present opportunities to study human responses to issues such as natural disaster and water scarcity over time.
The BIAA has extensive collections, ranging from animal bones, pottery sherds, photography and documents, which are complimented by a growing digital archive and digital-born data. These archives and collections, along with other archives and collections related to Türkiye and the Black Sea, present opportunities for quantitative and qualitative research using different disciplinary perspectives to further our understanding of the region.
This SRI promotes research into the dynamic ways in which cultural heritage is understood and studied, highlighting its complex nature on a local, regional, national, and global scale. Research into tangible and intangible cultural heritage can be approached from different perspectives, such as public engagement, identity formation, policy making, tourism, international relations and economic regeneration.
Sitting at the crossroads of Eurasia and Africa, Türkiye and the Black Sea region has seen multiple waves of long-distance migration since prehistoric times and through to the present day. This SRI invites research on the tangible and intangible effects of cultural exchanges across a range of phenomena, including cuisine, architecture, religion, folklore and traditions, literature, music, language, trade, and political ideas.
The region has one of the best-defined long-term records of settlement during the Holocene period and its study is central to a range of questions, including human movement, the changing relationships of humans with the environment, settlement formation and distribution, and shifts in urban-rural relationships. This SRI supports research that seeks to better understand the long history of people living in and moving to the region from individual or inter-disciplinary perspectives.
Cultural and artistic developments (such as in literature, media, music and cinema), sport and leisure activities, regeneration of urban spaces, and progress in medicine, science, and technology can be considered as hallmarks of modernity. This SRI encourages research into the ways that cultural production and consumption are reflected in changing patterns of modernity and identity, such as, gender, nationality, ethnicity and communal forms of belonging. (Image: SALTOnline@FlickrCommons, Hayati Tabanlıoğlu Archive)