Biography

I am a historian of modern Southeastern Europe whose interests span empire, nation-building, citizenship, ethno-religious conflicts, and Muslim minorities. My dissertation examined how the intertwined projects of nation-building and modernization in post-Ottoman Bulgaria brought about ethno-religious conflicts.
Most recently I have begun researching citizenship formation in Bulgaria (ca. 1900-1939) by studying corporatist challenges to the liberal underpinnings of national citizenship – agrarianism and Turkish Muslim reformism.

During my year at the EUI I will mostly develop further my research on citizenship by studying the transition from the 19th century Ottoman ideology of pluralistic subjecthood (as elaborated in the Tanzimat and post-Tanzimat periods) to the ideology of national citizenship in the newly founded Bulgarian state (ca. 1850s-1930s).

I received my Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2006. Currently I am a Returning Scholar Fellow (Open Society Institute) at the Department of History and Theory of Culture in Sofia University where I teach courses on late Ottoman and modern Balkan history.

I also hold a research fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study Sofia within the Research Project “Regimes of Historicity and Discourses of Modernity and Identity, 1900-1945, in East-Central, Southeastern and Northern Europe.” My article, titled “Protected Minority or National Citizens? Turkish Muslims in Bulgarian Nation-building” is forthcoming in a special issue on Southeast European Muslims of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.