I am an urban and environmental historian of the late Ottoman Empire.

More information about Mehmet Kentel

Fields of interest

Urban history, environmental history, infrastructure studies, Ottoman Empire, Middle East
 

Grants and awards

• 2021 European Society for Environmental History Research Grant
• 2021 Barakat Postgraduate and Early Career Award
• 2021 Koç University’s ANAMED Postdoctoral Fellowship
• 2021 Spatial Justice Association Research Award
• 2020 University of Vienna Andreas Tietze Memorial Fellowship in Turkish Studies
• 2018 “Distinguished Dissertation” by the UW Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Near and Middle Eastern Studies
• 2017 The Dr. Walter W. Ristow Prize Honorable Mention for the paper “Empire on a Board: Navigating the British Empire through Geographical Board Games in the Nineteenth Century”
• 2017 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Foundation Writing-Up Grant 2017 UW Graduate School Presidential Dissertation Award
• 2017 UW Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations Schwartz Endowment Fellowship 2015 UW Simpson Center Summer Research Fellowship in Digital Humanities
• 2014 Koç University’s ANAMed Junior Residential Fellowship
• 2014 SALT Research Institute Research Grant
• 2012 UW Hall-Ammerer-Washington Research Foundation Fellowship

Selected publications

"Pera’nın Atığı, Kasımpaşa’nın Salgını: On Dokuzuncu Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında İstanbul’da Kolera Salgınları ve Çevre Adaleti". Toplumsal Tarih Akademi (2023): 52-71. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/ttakademi/issue/78535/1275462

“Ruin and Knowledge in Pera: Discovering the Genoese Heritage in Istanbul in the Moment of Its Destruction.” Forthcoming in Muqarnas. https://brill.com/view/journals/muqj/muqj-overview.xml

“Pera, Kasımpaşa, Sewers, and Maps: Representing Infrastructural Entanglements in the Nineteenth-Century Istanbul.” Journal of the Ottoman & Turkish Studies Association 8, no. 1 (Summer 2021): 405–414. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/845969/

“Nature’s ‘Cosmopolis’: Villagers, Engineers, and Animals along Terkos Waterworks in Late Nineteenth-Century Istanbul.” In The Seeds of Power: Explorations in the Environmental History of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Onur Inal and Yavuz Köse, 155–183. Winwick: The White Horse Press, 2019 (translated to Turkish: İktidar Tohumları [İletişim, 2022]. https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl/stable/j.ctv289dv04.15

"Caricaturizing “Cosmopolitan” Pera: Play, Critique, and Absence in Yusuf Franko’s Caricatures, 1884–1896." Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association
Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring 2018), 7-32. https://www⁠.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jottturstuass.5.1.03