Hazal Özdemir

Hazal Özdemir is a legal and social historian of the late Ottoman Empire, with a focus on migration and belonging. Her research and teaching interests include transnational histories of migration and refugees, citizenship, photography and archives, and minorities in the modern Middle East. Her work pursues how Ottoman subjecthood was unmade in the context of migration—a question that requires interdisciplinary tools I draw from histories of mobility, visual culture, gender studies, and fields of citizenship and belonging. Hazal is currently working on her first monograph, which traces how the late Ottoman government of Sultan Abdülhamid linked outbound, temporary labor migration to methods for permanently uprooting Armenian subjects from the empire, including the creation of a photographic database to track their identity. Hazal holds a BA in History from Boğaziçi University, Turkey, and an MA in History of Art with Photography from Birkbeck, University of London. Her first book project was funded by institutions such as the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Society for Armenian Studies (SAS). Her second project aims to provide a more comprehensive history of the monumental Greek-Turkish Population Exchange by focusing on the relationship between land tenure and citizenship in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913).