Friends of the American Research Institute Turkey (FARIT)

Joint Lecture Series: Hubs, networks and trajectories. The Great Games of Pandemics. Sanitary Internationalism in the Middle East and North Africa, 1792-1942

June 11, 2026, at 7 pm
Online
To register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/o60hQPQYQPq5yqLXg5a_4g #/registration

Speaker: Ozan Özavcı (Utrecht University)
Discussant: Benan Grams (Loyola University New Orleans)

The international sanitary councils in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) were one of the earliest, longest lasting and relatively successful instances of global north-south public health cooperation in history. Jointly established by European, American and local historical actors in Tangier, Tunis, Alexandria, and Constantinople/Istanbul from the late eighteenth century onward, these (proto-)institutional structures of power formed unprecedented and unparalleled epidemiological networks at the crossroads of continents. They fought pandemics from below, rather than through top-tier intergovernmental gatherings and conventions, and obtained more concrete results at a time even when the international sanitary conferences were at a loss. The global northern and southern sanitarians (diplomats, physicians, functionaries, merchants, medical administrators, scientists, engineers, and others) collectively strategised against waves of epidemics and pandemics from at least the 1790s through until the 1940s.

Ozan Ozavci’s presentation will offer an exploratory introduction to how the councils in MENA came into existence and why it is crucial to consider their work as the onset of sanitary internationalism. Drawing on the findings of his ERC COOPERATION project from archives in Europe, North America, MENA and Russia, he will argue that rather than top-down Great Power imposition on MENA polities alone, it was the reciprocal interest calculations that prompted these decentralised, more dynamic and yet largely overlooked forms on transimperial cooperation in pursuit of health security. Yet, all along, the councils had to overcome the familiar barriers to collective action such as Orientalist and racial prejudices, economic and financial considerations, as well as religious and nationalist backlashes within a multi-polar, imperial world.

Short Bio:

Ozan Özavcı is Associate Professor of Transimperial History at Utrecht University, co-convenor of the Lausanne Project and principal investigator of the ERC CoG COOPERATION project. In addition to several book chapters and articles published in leading historical journals, he is the author of three monographs, most notably Dangerous Gifts: Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars in the Levant, 1798–1864 (OUP, 2021). He is also the co-editor of three volumes, among them Securing Empire: Imperial Cooperation and Competition in the Nineteenth Century (Bloomsbury, 2024, together with Beatrice de Graaf and Erik de Lange), and co-author of a graphic novel on peace-making in the early twentieth century. He is currently working on a fourth monograph on the making of global north-south public health cooperation.

--
American Research Institute in Turkey
Istanbul Branch
Tomtom Mah. İstiklal Cad.
No 181 Merkez Han
Beyoğlu İstanbul

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: The Great Games of Pandemics. Sanitary Internationalism in the Middle East and North Africa, 1792-1942. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting. You are cordially invited to the lecture by Ozan Özavcı on 11 June 2026, at 19.00 Istanbul time. The international sanitary councils in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) were one of the earliest, longest lasting and relatively successful instances of global north-south public health cooperat...

ARIT LECTURE

Western Merchants, French Diplomacy and Islamic Law
in the Ottoman Mediterranean (circa 1600)

by

Viorel PANAITE
Senior Researcher at the Institute for South-East European Studies (Romanian Academy),
Professor Emeritus, Doctoral School of History, University of Bucharest

3 June 2026,

7:00 pm (Turkish time)

Online

This lecture is based on my book The Ambassador’s Notebook. Western merchants, French diplomacy and Islamic law in the Ottoman Mediterranean (c. 1600) (collection “The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage”, vol. 81), Leiden-Boston: BRILL, 2025, XLII+691 p. (https://brill.com/display/title/70204)

The Manuscript Turc 130 (MS Turc 130) from the Bibliothèque nationale de France is unique among manuscripts relating to Franco-Ottoman relations. It could be described as an anthology of Ottoman documents, but it is not an ordinary anthology. It is diverse in terms of the typology of Ottoman documents and their subject matter, but it is extremely coherent chronologically, with documents dating from 1596 to 1602. The uniqueness of this manuscript is mainly due to the deliberate structuring of the documentary material into three distinct parts, namely the diplomatic, legal and administrative sections. François Savary de Brèves, the ambassador of Henri IV to the Ottoman court between 1593 and 1604, was the originator of MS Turc 130. Looking at the pace at which ambassadorial petitions, sultanic edicts and legal opinions follow one another in MS Turc 130 (and here are only some of those relating to French merchants, to which we should add the documents issued to the Venetians and the English), we have a picture of the Ottoman chancery working at full speed for the security of trade and merchants in Ottoman waters, ports and cities. MS Turc 130 is therefore a vivid documentary testimony to the presence of Western merchants, especially the French, in the Ottoman Mediterranean and provides rare new information on various aspects of Western trade in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

For Zoom Registration

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/Acua1rrVS2e4B61k-z9pmw

F/ARIT
Office Hours: Monday to Friday 9-12:30, 1:30-6:00
Address: Atatürk Bulvarı. 154/13 06690 Çankaya-Ankara
tel: (90) 312 427 2222
fax: (90) 312 427 4979
email: [email protected]

Joint Lecture Series: Hubs, networks and trajectories. Resurrecting the Past: Archaeology and the Coloniality of Knowledge in the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon

7/05/2026 / 06:00pm – 08:00pm

In English - Online

Online connection link
ID: 962 8073 4298
Password: 558453

Speaker
Sarah Griswold (Associate Professor of History at Oklahoma State University and Associate Director of OSU’s Center for the Humanities)

Discussant
Ceren Abi (Middle East Studies Association – MESA)

Title
Resurrecting the Past: Archaeology and the Coloniality of Knowledge in the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon

How did heritage science abet the mandate regimes that took shape from 1918? This talk examines how the French mandate in Syria and Lebanon used archaeology, preservation, and museums to produce political authority after the First World War. It argues that heritage was not a secondary cultural project but a central technology of rule. In cities such as Beirut, Damascus, and Aleppo, scholars, officials, and local actors contested who had the right to interpret the past, control excavated objects and define historical value. Situating the mandate within wider intellectual and political phenomena of the era, the talk explores how the French mandate became a hub of innovation, rivalry, and exchange that created colonialist knowledge while also imperiling it.

Short Bio: Sarah Griswold is currently Associate Professor of History at Oklahoma State University and Associate Director of OSU’s Center for the Humanities. As of August 2026, she will be Associate Professor of History at the College of the Holy Cross. She is a historian of modern France, heritage, and knowledge production. Her recent book, Resurrecting the Past: France’s Forgotten Heritage Mandate (Cornell University Press, 2025), examines archaeology, preservation, and colonial governance in mandate Syria and Lebanon.

ARIT Ankara Hybrid lecture by Emine Evered: Alcohol at Empire’s End: The Politics of Prohibition in Post-WWI Ottoman Empire

For Zoom Registration: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4iyZ0A_kTPq417RR5g0ebg

F/ARIT
Office Hours: Monday to Friday 9-12:30, 1:30-6:00
Address: Atatürk Bulvarı. 154/13 06690 Çankaya-Ankara
tel: (90) 312 427 2222
fax: (90) 312 427 4979
email: [email protected]

Research and Documentation of
the Hungarian-Related Historical Sites in Türkiye
by
Áron Sipos
Director of Liszt Institute - Hungarian Cultural Center
and
Gergő Máté Kovács
Deputy Director of Liszt Institute - Hungarian Cultural Center
17 April 2026, 7:30 pm (Turkish time), Hybrid

F/ARIT
Office Hours: Monday to Friday 9-12:30, 1:30-6:00
Address: Atatürk Bulvarı. 154/13 06690 Çankaya-Ankara
tel: (90) 312 427 2222
fax: (90) 312 427 4979
email: [email protected]

Special Zoom lecture on Karakeçili Carpet History - April 18
We are sharing with you the announcement of a zoom lecture on Karakeçili carpets organized by New England Rug Society and Textile Museum Associates of Southern California as this may be of interest to you:
Saturday, April 18, 2026 10 am PT / 1 pm ET / 6 pm BST - London

https://tinyurl.com/TMAKarakeciliaritwebpgreg

ARIT Hybrid Lecture by Işıl Acehan: Echoes of 1776 in Ankara: The American Declaration of Independence and the Birth of Modern Türkiye

ARIT - INA - KUDAR Lecture by Dr. George Koutsouflakis - The Unharvested Sea: Ten Years of Underwater Archaeological Research in the Phournoi Archipelago, from 2015-2025

Join us on April 2nd, 2026, for our next ARIT-INA-KUDAR online seminar from Dr. George Koutsouflakis, of the University of Thessaly, who will discuss The Unharvested Sea: Ten Years of Underwater Archaeological Research in the Phournoi Archipelago, from 2015–2025. For those of you who may not know, Phournoi is an island cluster in the Eastern Aegean consisting of three main islands and more than twenty islets and rocky outcrops. Overshadowed by the larger and historically more prominent islands nearby like Samos and Ikaria, Phournoi is only marginally mentioned by ancient historians and geographers, and no historically significant events are known to have taken place there. Today, the islands are inhabited by a small insular community of approximately 1,100 people, whose livelihoods are primarily connected to maritime activities and tourism.

In 2015, an ambitious research programme was launched as a collaboration between the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and the RPM Nautical Foundation. The aim of the project was the systematic survey, documentation, and study of all ancient, medieval, and post-medieval shipwrecks in the Phournoi archipelago. By 2025, the research documented more than fifty shipwrecks in the waters of Phournoi. Since 2022, and with the participation of the University of Thessaly, the project has also undertaken the excavation of a Late Roman shipwreck carrying a mixed cargo of amphorae originating from the Black Sea and the Aegean.

Dr. Koutsouflakis’s seminar will present the history of underwater archaeological research at Phournoi, highlight the working conditions and challenges of conducting fieldwork in remote areas, focus on the most significant cargos and finds, and conclude with the preliminary results of the excavation of the Late Roman shipwreck.

Join us online at 19:00 (Türkiye) by registering at this link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/T98luhuBSn-OeEVNw3Q50w
--
AMERICAN RESEARCH INSTITUTE IN TURKEY - ANKARA BRANCH
Atatürk Bulvarı 154/13 06690 Çankaya-Ankara
phone: 312 427 2222 - fax: 312 456 4979
https://aritweb.org/

Home - The American Research Institute in Turkey American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT)

New Perspectives in Hittite Archaeology

by

Yiğit Erbil

Department of Archaeology, Hacettepe University

10 March 2026, 7:00 pm (Turkish time), Hybrid

As a dynamic field of research, Hittite studies have long occupied a central place in Anatolian archaeology. In recent years, a substantial number of new discoveries have significantly advanced our understanding of the culture and history of the Hittites and of Late Bronze Age Anatolia more broadly. This talk explores recent archaeological finds and emerging research approaches in Hittite studies, highlighting their implications for reconstructing the Hittite world.

For Zoom Registration:

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/Y5Ko9L2XRviiAh7wJcZp6A

F/ARIT
Office Hours: Monday to Friday 9-12:30, 1:30-6:00
Address: Atatürk Bulvarı. 154/13 06690 Çankaya-Ankara
tel: (90) 312 427 2222
fax: (90) 312 427 4979
email: [email protected]