Faculty

METU Architectural History Faculty

Professors

(in alphabetical order)

T. Elvan ALTAN (B.Arch., M.A., METU; Ph.D., SUNY at Binghamton)

19th and 20th Century Architecture, Modern Architecture, Architecture in late Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey, Social Production of the Built Environment, Architectural Historiography

tomris@metu.edu.tr

Suna GÜVEN (B.A., Wellesley College; M.A., Ph.D., Cornell University)

Roman and Byzantine Architecture, Latin Architecture in Cyprus, Memory, Acculturation, Imaging

sunag@metu.edu.tr

Belgin TURAN ÖZKAYA (B.Arch., M.Sc. in Restoration, METU; Ph.D., Cornell University) 

Trained as a modernist at Cornell University (Ph.D., 1995), Professor Turan-Özkaya’s current work tackles intertwined histories of nineteenth and twentieth-century architectures. Her earlier publications on twentieth-century Italian architecture include essays in JAE, Harvard Design Magazine, Biographies and Space: Placing the Subject in Art and Architecture and Rethinking Architectural Historiography (Routledge, 2006, long listed for the RIBA Sir Nikolaus Pevsner International Book Award). In 2009, she co-initiated a British Academy project "Ambivalent Geographies" to probe nineteenth and twentieth-century architecture and culture in West Asia within the framework of Ottoman British interactions. As a group of scholars not only from the UK, US and Turkey but also from Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan and Egypt, they organized workshops in Ankara, Southampton, and Riverside, California. Among their publications are “Modern Architecture in the Middle East: Beyond Tradition and Development,” (DOCOMOMO Journal, 2006), “Transpositions on the Edge of Europe: Ambivalence and Difference in Architecture,” (Journal of Architecture, 2011), and “Ambivalent Architectures from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic,” (New Perspectives on Turkey, 2014). As part of “Ambivalent Geographies” project she started working on a book, Itinerant Objects: British Museum and the Ottoman Response to Antiquity, in which she traces the intertwined histories of three groups of objects from the British Museum: the Xanthian, Canning and Assyrian marbles that were collected and transported from Lycia, Halicarnassus and Mesopotamia, all Ottoman territories back then, to the British Museum by British envoys and early archaeologists in the mid-nineteenth century. Itinerant Objects is a project of connected histories that covers both the Ottoman and the British cultures of collecting and display. Professor Turan-Özkaya, who has received fellowships and grants from the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Koç University ANAMED and the Getty Research Institute, has also edited “Spaces of Vision: Architecture and Visuality in the Modern Era,” (Architectural Theory Review, 2007), and a special collection on “Travel,” (Architectural Histories, Journal of the EAHN, 2016). During 2017- 2018 academic year she was an AKPIA Associate at Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture.

Modernism/Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Architecture, Nineteenth-Century Culture of Travel, Collecting and Display, Twentieth-Century Italian Architecture, Theories of Vision and Visuality, Gender Theory, Historiography

belt@metu.edu.tr Belgin TURAN ÖZKAYA CV

Ali Uzay PEKER (B.A., Istanbul University; M.A., Boğaziçi University; Ph.D., Istanbul Technical University)

Early Islamic, Seljuk and Ottoman Architecture, Occidentalism and Orientalism in Architecture, Thirteenth Century Anatolia, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Baroque and Rococo), Exoticism, Iconography and Symbolism in Islamic and Christian Architecture, Cosmology (ancient and medieval), Ottoman Archaeology

peker@metu.edu.tr

(personal web-page: http://www.metu.edu.tr/~peker/)

 

Associate Professors

Lale ÖZGENEL (B.Arch., M.A., METU; Ph.D., METU)        

Domestic Architecture in Classical and Late Antiquity, History of Domestic Architecture and Daily Life, Privacy and Gender Studies

olale@metu.edu.tr

Assistant Professors

Pelin YONCACI ARSLAN (B.Arch., M.A., METU; Ph.D., University of California Los Angeles)        

Byzantine Urban Landscape, Early Byzantine Urbanism, Historical Topography of Constantinople, Columnar Monuments of Pre-modern era, Mapping and Network Analysis in the field of Digital Humanities, 3D Digital Reconstructions of Historical Sites, Multimedia Maps populated with spatial narratives

pyoncaci@metu.edu.tr

Ekin PINAR (B. Arch., M.A., METU; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania)

Ekin Pınar received her Ph.D. from the History of Art department at the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of interest include history of art and architecture (modern and contemporary), cinema studies, history and theory of animation, history of experimental film and visual culture, expanded cinema, site-specific art, museum studies, institutional critique, and gender and sexuality studies. She has taught several courses on history and theory of film, animation, and modern and contemporary art and architecture at the History of Art department and Cinema Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania, at Middle East Technical University, as well as at the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Film at the Franklin and Marshall College. She is currently working on a book project on Canyon Collective, an experimental film group active in the San Francisco Bay Area in the sixties and seventies, and the ways in which their film production embodied a protean and transnational concept of space.

History of Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture; Cinema Studies; Site-Specific Art; Museum Studies and Institutional Critique; Expanded Cinema and Moving Image Exhibition Practices and Spaces; Audio-Visual Essay and Historiography; Narrative Space; Sense of Place in Cinema; History and Theory of Animation; Global Turn, Race, and Art and Architectural Histories; Gender and Sexuality Studies

ekinp@metu.edu.tr 

Emeritus Professors

İnci ASLANOĞLU (B.Arch., M.Arch., METU; Ph.D., ITÜ)

Early Republican Turkish Architecture, Foreign Architects in the 20th Century Turkish Architectural Scene, Ottoman Architecture, Ottoman and Western Architecture in the Nineteenth Century, Italian Renaissance Architecture, European and Ottoman Baroque Architecture

aslanogl@arch.metu.edu.tr

Jale ERZEN (B.F.A., M.F.A., Art Center College of Design L.A.; Ph.D., ITÜ)

Ottoman Aesthetics, Ottoman Miniatures, Ottoman Architecture of the 15th-16th Centuries; Modern Art, Turkish Art General, Art Criticism; Aesthetics; Environmental Aesthetics

erzen@arch.metu.edu.tr

Sevil ENGİNSOY EKİNCİ (B.Arch., M.A., METU; Ph.D., Cornell University) (now at Kadir Has University, İstanbul)

Early Modern Architectural Theory, History of Architectural Books, History of the Body in Architectural Theory, History and Theory of Architectural Historiography, Architectural Encounters between “East” and “West” in the 15th-16th and the 19th centuries

enginsoy@metu.edu.tr

Honorary Professors

Dana ARNOLD (Middlesex University)

British Architectural History and Historiography; Country House Studies; London 1700-1840; Art History and Aesthetic; the Material Culture and Cultural History of the long eighteenth century

D.R.Arnold@soton.ac.uk

 

Part-time Instructors

Nahide Işık Demirakın (BSc. ODTÜ; M.A., Ph.D., Bilkent University)

Urban History, Historiography, Cultural History, 19th Century Ottoman Empire, Modernization

dupeyker@gmail.edu.tr

Namık ERKAL (B.Arch., M.A., METU; Ph.D., METU)

Urban history, Architecture of City Frontier, Byzantion-Constantinople-Istanbul

erkal@arch.metu.edu.tr

Jale ERZEN (B.F.A., M.F.A., Art Center College of Design L.A.; Ph.D., ITÜ)

Ottoman Aesthetics, Ottoman Miniatures, Ottoman Architecture of the 15th-16th Centuries; Modern Art, Turkish Art General, Art Criticism; Aesthetics; Environmental Aesthetics

erzen@arch.metu.edu.tr

Research Assistants

Saliha ASLAN (B. Arch., Gazi University; M. Arch., Gazi University)

Urban and Architectural History, Urban and Architectural Design, Late Ottoman Civic Architecture, Suburban Architecture in the Early Modern Period, Architecture of City Frontiers and Urban Sprawl

saliha@metu.edu.tr

Aylin ATACAN Research Assistant (B.Arch, Anadolu University; M.Sc., Gazi University)

Architectural Analysis through Films, History of Modern Architecture, Architectural Theory, Domesticity in Antiquity, Cinema and Architecture

atacanaylin@gmail.com

Elif BİLGE Research Assistant (B.Arch, Kocaeli University; M.Sc., METU)

Roman Architecture, History of Domestic Architecture and Daily Life

bilgeelife@gmail.com

Nesrin ERDOĞAN Research Assistant (B.Arch., METU)

Post-war Italian architecture, Gender studies and feminism, History of modern architecture, Representation in architectural historiography

k.nesrinerdogan@gmail.com

Gizem GÜNER Research Assistant (B.LAUD, Bilkent University; M.Sc., METU)

Urban Design, Gender Studies, Architectural Historiography, Narrated Spaces, Architecture and Literature

hgizemguner@gmail.com

Orçun Sena SARACOĞLU Research Assistant (B.A., Bilkent University)

interior design, medieval architecture, seljukid and ottoman architecture, Byzantine architecture, cosmological patterns and symbolism in architecture, philosophical repercussions in architecture

orcunsenasaracoglu@gmail.com