ottomancosmopolitanism

We live in a world that emphasises conflict:  Muslims versus Jews; Christians versus Muslims — above all, East versus West. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are shaped by religious, regional and cultural nationalisms, competing claims that hinge on our differences from one another.

This research project — which is an extensive collaboration bringing together from around the world academics, artists, and photographers; musicians and museum curators; chefs and gastronomists; and writers and journalists — intervenes in contemporary tensions by looking at what the rich cultural exchanges that characterised the past of the Ottoman Empire can teach us in the present about memorial connections between different groups.

For an overview of our project, click on our Ottoman Cosmopolitanism Slideshow, which was presented at the AHRC Translating Cultures Symposium at Senate House on 29 March 2014.

Principal Investigator, Jay Prosser, University of Leeds
Co-investigator, Gabriel Koureas, Birkbeck College, University of London
Visual Advisor, Leslie Hakim-Dowek, University of Portsmouth
Project Advisor, Colette Wilson, University of Westminster
Research Assistant, Henghameh Saroukhani, University of Leeds