Panel

Chamber Talks
Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital
Çiğdem Kafescioğlu
Sevil Enginsoy Ekinci, Emir Alışık, Ekin Can Göksoy

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13 May 2026 / 18.30

Çiğdem Kafescioğlu's Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital (Penn State University Press, 2009) earned the Society of Architectural Historians' Spiro Kostof Book Award and has since established itself as a foundational work in the field, examining the making of the Ottoman capital across architecture, visual culture, urban practice, and image. The publication of its Turkish translation, Konstantinopolis/İstanbul: İmparatorluk Başkentinde Mekânın ve İmgenin Yeniden İnşası, brings four speakers together to reflect on the book.

Emir Alışık will discuss his reading of the book from the perspective of Byzantine historiography and trace how that engagement has shifted over time. Ekin Can Göksoy will bring the book's arguments about the construction of the Ottoman capital into conversation with his research on early modern Bursa, examining how a city that lost its capital status continued to produce its own significance. Sevil Enginsoy Ekinci will read the English and Turkish editions side by side, exploring the maps each draws and updates for a Renaissance geography reshaped by the global turn in historiography. Çiğdem Kafescioğlu will respond to the presentations and share her reflections on the threads and transformations that have shaped the book from its publication to the present.

The panel will be conducted in Turkish. The event will be held at Pera Museum Auditorium and is free to attend; no reservation is required. The talk will subsequently be available on the Istanbul Research Institute's YouTube channel.

About Chamber Talks
Chamber Talks initiated by the Istanbul Research Institute (İAE) in 2008 to add a different dimension to Istanbul studies, aims to feature the latest research and discussions about Istanbul with its scope ranging from history to architecture, and from music to cinema.

About Çiğdem Kafescioğlu
 Çiğdem Kafescioğlu is a faculty member in the Department of History at Boğaziçi University. Her work focuses on the urban, architectural, visual, and material culture of the early modern Ottoman world. She is the author of Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital (2009), co-editor with Shirine Hamadeh of A Companion to Early Modern Istanbul (Brill, 2022), and co-curator and co-editor with K. Mehmet Kentel and M. Baha Tanman of On the Spot: Panoramic Gaze on Istanbul, A History (Pera Museum, 2023–24). She continues to pursue research on images of the city and urbanity in Ottoman visual, historical, geographical, and literary sources, alongside a study tracing water, water structures, and their representations in the early modern city.

About Sevil Enginsoy Ekinci
Sevil Enginsoy Ekinci holds a BSc in Architecture (1987) and an MA in Architectural History (1990) from Middle East Technical University, and a PhD from Cornell University (2002). Following her graduate training at METU, she taught full- or part-time at Boğaziçi, Kadir Has, TED, and Istanbul Bilgi University. She will continue her work as an independent researcher in the Architectural History graduate program at METU starting next academic year. Her research focuses on early modern architectural books, early modern architectural encounters, the historiography of architecture, and the intersections of architecture with literature and the arts. She has organized sessions and presented papers at national and international conferences, and her work includes edited volumes in Turkish and English, journal articles, book chapters, book and exhibition reviews, and curated exhibitions. She is currently developing collective and interdisciplinary research centered on a more-than-human world and working on a book project on the history and historiography of Renaissance architecture in Turkey. She also maintains two blogs: Ayasofya Günlüğü and Gezgin Kayıtlar: Bir Sonradan Modalı'nın Kadıköy-Moda Tramvayı Notları.

About Emir Alışık
 Emir Alışık completed his doctorate at the Department of Art History, Istanbul University, with a thesis on the transformation of the Byzantine image in medieval and Renaissance Italian visual representation. He served as curator of "What Byzantinism Is This in Istanbul!": Byzantium in Popular Culture, which opened at Pera Museum in 2021. He works at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) at Koç University in the areas of exhibitions and academic oral programming. He also serves as subject editor for Byzantine Studies at YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies, published by the Istanbul Research Institute, and is a member of the board of trustees of the History Foundation of Turkey (Tarih Vakfı).

About Ekin Can Göksoy
Ekin Can Göksoy is production editor at the Istanbul Research Institute and managing editor of YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies. He completed his PhD in History at Boğaziçi University in 2024, focusing on early modern Ottoman urban history. His research interests include Ottoman urban history, public space studies, architecture, literature, and urbanity in early modern Ottoman cities, and night history/studies. He is also an author; his two books, Epope Tatavla (2016) and Münhal (2014), are published by İletişim Press.