The Khalili Research Centre

The final session of this term's Research Seminar Series takes place this Thursday, June 18th 2026. Muzaffer Özgüleş (Barakat Trust Postdoctoral Fellow, KRC) will deliver a talk titled "Historicising and Visualising the Evolution of Ottoman Architecture in Istanbul from the Mid-fifteenth to the Early Twentieth Century". The seminar will take place at 5.15pm in the KRC Lecture Room. All are welcome.

The penultimate session of this term's Research Seminar Series takes place this Thursday, June 11th 2026, and features two talks. At 4pm Nilay Özlü & Ceren Abi (Istanbul Technical University) will be delivering a talk titled "Archives and Archaeology: Unearthing the Ottoman Perspective". Then, at 5.15pm Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal (Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Naples) and Gizem Tongo (KRC & Lusail Museum, Doha) will deliver a talk titled "Occupation on Display: Curating the Aftermath of World War I in Istanbul". The seminars will take place in the KRC Lecture Room. All are welcome.

The sixth of this term's Research Seminar Series takes place this Thursday, June 4th 2026. Emine Fetvaci (Boston College) will be delivering a talk titled "Portrait as Biography at the Ottoman Court: the Case of Murad III (r. 1574–95)". The seminar will take place in the KRC Lecture Room starting at 5.15pm. All are welcome.

The fifth of this term's Research Seminar Series takes place this Thursday, May 28th 2026. Margaret Squires (Ashmolean Museum) will be delivering a talk titled "Woven Together: Carpets and Architecture in Safavid Iran". The seminar will take place in the KRC Lecture Room starting at 5.15pm. All are welcome.

The fourth of this term's Research Seminar Series takes place this Thursday, May 21st 2026. Stephane Pradines (The Aga Khan University) will be delivering a talk titled "Islamic Archaeology in Egypt: Sixteen Years of Rescue Excavations in Cairo". The seminar will take place in the KRC Lecture Room starting at 5.15pm. All are welcome.

The third of this term's Research Seminar Series takes place this Thursday, May 14th 2026. Deniz Turker (Rutgers–New Brunswick) will be delivering a talk titled "Beside the Sultan: Harem Patronage and Dynastic Networks in the Reign of Selim III (1789–1807)". The seminar will take place in the KRC Lecture Room starting at 5.15pm. All are welcome.

Taking place at Wolfson College on May 22nd 2026, the Kizilbash/Alevism-Bektashism Symposium provides a rare opportunity to bring together established and emerging scholars of Alevi-Bektashi studies from the UK and abroad at the University of Oxford. It is the first of its kind globally to focus on digitally engaged projects on Kizilbash/Alevi-Bektashi material culture and heritage in Ottoman and contemporary contexts. Over the past five years, scholarship has increasingly moved towards large-scale digital research methods, including the digitisation of historical sources such as manuscripts and documents, mapping villages and sacred sites, conducting digitally informed ethnographic fieldwork, and documenting intangible cultural heritage such as ritual songs and dances.

For further information please see: https://krc.web.ox.ac.uk/event/kizilbash/alevism-bektashism-symposium

The second of this term's Research Seminar Series takes place this Thursday, May 7th 2026. Suna Çağaptay (Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University) will be delivering a talk titled "Reading Between the Lines: The Maritime Landscape of Anaia on the Byzantine-Genoese and Aydinid Cusp". The seminar will take place in the KRC Lecture Room starting at 5.15pm. All are welcome.

The first of this term's Research Seminar Series takes place this Thursday, April 30th 2026. Hala Qasqas (Barakat Trust Postdoctoral Fellow, KRC) will be delivering a talk titled "Embodied Shadows: Puppets, Performance, and Social Critique in Late Ottoman Damascus". The seminar will take place in the KRC Lecture Room starting at 5.15pm. All are welcome.

Many thanks to the Faculté des Lettres & des Sciences Humaines de Kairouan for hosting the conference "La culture écrite à Kairouan à l'époque médiévale" on April 14th 2026, which was organised by by Ahmed El Bahi, Umberto Bongianino, and Clément Salah. Further details, and some great photos of the event, are in the attached post.