Melis Taner, Ph.D.

Melis Taner is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the interdisciplinary programme 4A Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics. She is Assistant Professor of Art History at Ozyegin University, Istanbul, where she is based. Her research focuses on early modern Ottoman and Safavid art, with particular attention to cross-cultural exchanges. Her recent monograph "Caught in a Whirlwind: A Cultural History of Ottoman Baghdad as Reflected in its Illustrated Manuscripts" is a contextual study of the vibrant late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century Baghdad art market, a frontier area caught between the rival Ottoman and Safavid empires. Her current research, too, focuses on cross-cultural exchanges—this time between Europe and the Ottoman lands—and is aimed at the formulation of a more closely connected history of early modern art and science.