Dr Orçun Can Okan

I am a historian of the late Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. My published work deals mainly with transitions to new political regimes in former Ottoman domains in the aftermath of World War I.

Research Interests

I received my PhD in History from Columbia University in 2020, with a dissertation titled "Coping with Transitions: The Connected Construction of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, 1918-1928." From 2020-2023, I held a postdoctoral fellowship in Global History and Governance at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale in Naples. Before doctoral and postdoctoral studies in New York and Naples, I studied mainly in Istanbul and worked on my Arabic in Beirut and Cairo. I hold MA degrees in History (Columbia, 2015; Boğaziçi, 2013) and BA degrees in History and Turkish Language and Literature (Boğaziçi, 2010; Boğaziçi, 2010).

As a Research Associate on the ERC-funded project Moving Stories at Oxford, my research engages primarily with life-writing, family and gender through problems of state succession, nationality and citizenship in transitions to post-Ottoman regimes.