Dr Semih Celik

My academic interests fall under the rubric of environmental history and history of science in the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. My research aims on the one hand to locate the Ottoman Empire within global history, on the other hand to contribute to historiography and curricula with non-colonial histories of the environment and science.

I am currently working on my book manuscript titled Climate Change, Famines and Empire-Building in Anatolia c. 1800-1850. The book aims to bring together the outcomes of my PhD and postdoctoral research on the climate change in early nineteenth century Anatolia; the development and institutionalization of scientific approaches to nature - especially the founding of a natural history museum in Istanbul in the 1830s; social and administrative reactions to droughts and famines; and humanitarianism during famines.

More extensively, my research and publications scrutinize human-animal relationship in the early-modern and modern Middle East, networks of scientists and natural history museums, wetlands and the Anthropocene, and history of archaeology. In general, I am concerned with the role different actors played (and continue to play) in understanding and shaping the nature through various environing technologies.

I am interested in developing interdisciplinary methodologies for the analysis of history of climate change. Therefore I am open to collaboration from other disciplines. I also aim to employ digital humanities methodologies in my research.

Having obtained my BA degree in Political Science and International Relations, and MA degree in History in Istanbul, I moved to Florence to continue my studies at the History and Civilization PhD program in European University Institute. I wrote my PhD dissertation under the co-supervision of Prof. Luca Mola and Prof. Suraiya Faroqhi and defended it in 2017. In October 2016 I started working as a (postdoctoral) research fellow in an ERC project at the Department of History at Koc University, Istanbul. In June 2020 I have been awarded with funding for a 2,5-year project by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) and continued my research and teaching activities at the same department as a PI until I joined the History Department at Exeter in January 2022.