Staff profile

Brief Biography

I am an archaeologist specialising in the archaeology and reception of ancient Anatolia, with particular interests in Lycia, archaeological collecting, museums and the history of archaeology. I completed my PhD in Archaeology at Durham University in 2025. My thesis, Framing Charles Fellows’s Lycian Collection in the British Museum: Geopolitics and Cultural Identities in the 19th Century, examined the formation and reception of the British Museum’s Lycian collection within the wider political and cultural context of nineteenth-century Britain and the Ottoman Empire.

Before my PhD, I completed an MA in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at the University of East Anglia (UK) and an MA in Archaeology at Batman University (Turkiye). I received my BA in Archaeology from Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (Turkiye) and also studied Classical Archaeology at the University of Freiburg (Germany) as an Erasmus student.

I am currently a Lecturer in Archaeology at Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University, an Honorary Fellow at the British Institute at Ankara, and an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. From September 2025 to September 2026, I held the BIAA–Bilkent University Postdoctoral Fellowship. My project, The British Empire and its ‘National Museum’: Charles Fellows’s Lycian Expeditions and Imperial Collecting in the 1840s, examined the diplomatic, institutional and logistical networks that enabled the British Museum’s acquisition of Lycian antiquities, with particular attention to Charles Fellows, the Foreign Office, the British Embassy at Constantinople, the British Museum and the Royal Navy.

Alongside my work on the history of archaeology and collecting, I maintain research interests in Classical archaeology, ancient art and Roman mosaics. I have participated in archaeological projects at Zeugma and Kelenderis and in archaeological work connected with the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, undertaking roles ranging from trench and field supervision to deputy direction.

Research

My research brings together archaeology, museum history, archival research and the history of collecting. A major strand of my work concerns Lycia and the formation of the British Museum’s Lycian collection during the nineteenth century. I am particularly interested in how archaeological collecting was shaped by diplomacy, imperial institutions, local actors, military logistics and relations between Britain and the Ottoman Empire.

My BIAA–Bilkent postdoctoral project developed directly from my doctoral research. It examined the acquisition of the Ottoman firman for the removal of Lycian antiquities and the British expeditions to Lycia in 1841–42 and 1843–44, considering their place in the transition from antiquarian collecting towards more organised forms of archaeological practice. The project was designed around two principal publications, one on the firman and Anglo-Ottoman diplomacy and another on the scientific, political and logistical dimensions of the Lycian expeditions.

The first of these, “Authorising Removal: The Lycian Firman and Britain’s First State-Sponsored Antiquities Project,” has completed peer review at the Journal of the History of Collections and is currently under editorial consideration.

Conference Organisation

Academic event organisation has also formed an important part of my research. During my PhD at Durham University, I co-organised the MaVis Symposium, Pushing Boundaries: New Approaches to Material and Visual Culture in 2022 and the Jealous Laws Conference, Collecting and Managing Antiquities in the Ottoman Mediterranean in 2024. The latter was closely connected with my doctoral research and included Professor Edhem Eldem as keynote speaker.

During my BIAA–Bilkent postdoctoral fellowship, I co-organised Fragments of Empire: Collecting and the Making of Archaeology, held at Bilkent University in April 2026 in collaboration with the British Institute at Ankara and Bilkent University. The workshop developed directly from one of the planned outcomes of my fellowship, which included bringing together scholars working on the legal, diplomatic and practical dimensions of nineteenth-century collecting.

The papers from Fragments of Empire are being prepared as a special issue of Anatolian Studies. My own contribution, “Between Antiquarianism and Archaeology: Charles Fellows’s Lycian Expeditions, 1841–1844,” examines the changing character of the Lycian expeditions and their position between antiquarian travel, state-sponsored collecting and the emergence of modern archaeological practice.

Teaching

At Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University, Department of Archaeology, I currently teach:

• Scientific Research Methods in Archaeology
• Archaeology of Pre-Imperial Rome
• Professional Foreign Language: English
• Origins of Mosaic Art and Greek Mosaics

I also teach undergraduate courses at Ankara University, Faculty of Languages, History and Geography, including Greek Sculpture versus Roman Sculpture and Roman Architecture and Sculpture.