International Egodocumental Network Seminar 2/2025

Egodocuments: An Ottomanist Perspective

Prof. Dr. Selim Karahasanoğlu, Istanbul Medeniyet University

In this talk, I will present a brief overview of the egodocument research we have been conducting in Turkey for some time. Egodocument studies have been ongoing globally for a while, and significant contributions have also been made in this field in Turkey in recent years.

We are currently carrying out a TÜBİTAK-funded project, which will be completed in March 2026. As part of this initiative, we have organized three major egodocument events—two in Istanbul and one in Skopje. The outcomes of these events have been shared with the public through a roundtable published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies and a dedicated issue of The Journal of Ottoman Studies focused exclusively on the topic of egodocuments.

We have also launched a new journal titled Ceride: Journal of Ego-Document Studies. Additionally, we have recently completed an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation project, conducted in partnership between Istanbul Medeniyet University and Freie Universität Berlin. To discuss the findings of this collaborative project, we organized a one-day symposium with our German colleagues in Istanbul on December 13.

In this talk, I will provide details about these activities we have undertaken in the field of egodocuments and attempt to explain what an Ottoman egodocument is, using specific examples.