Introducing: Mete Oguz
Mete Oguz recently joined the Institute for History as a postdoctoral researcher within the starting grant project 'Reevaluating Conceptions of Imperial Monetary Flow: New Methodologies and Frameworks’ under the supervision of Liesbeth Claes and Isaac Scarborough. Below, he introduces himself.
Hi everyone, I’m Mete and I’m a Byzantinist – and I assure you this is not a joke profession! My existence began in Istanbul: For twenty-eight years I marinated in exhaust fumes and seagull feces, never living more than an eyeshot away from the world’s throat, whose turbid waters have witnessed the passage of many great civilizations. I studied engineering, physics, and history – in that order – at Bogazici University, before feeling the call of Byzantium. Byzantium is a Cthulhu-like entity slumbering in the subterranean space beneath Istanbul, from where it whispers and enchants hapless historians who are looking for purpose and direction.
After completing a master’s degree (in Byzantine history) under the guidance of this sepulchral enchantment, I packed up my life and crossed the Atlantic to Vancouver, Canada, where somehow, rather astonishingly, the enchantment did not cease! I was thus driven into madness completing a PhD in Byzantine history, where I combed through the incoherent annals of the Medieval dark ages, listening to murmurs of frozen secrets buried beneath the weight of time. I examined and published research on the long-lost lives of Anatolian villagers left undulating in the antiseptic fabric of history, an activity that I still thoroughly enjoy. The cumulation of this work – my incoming monograph – is currently in its (hopefully) final editing stages at Cambridge University Press.
I have recently had the great pleasure of joining the history department at Leiden University as a postdoc, where I will be working on the Imperial Monetary Flows project alongside professors Liesbeth Claes and Isaac Scarborough. Of course, the siren-like allure of Byzantium still follows me like a shadow – or maybe I’m the shadow following it at this point – and the project will therefore involve a tri-partite investigation of monetary flow within three temporally distant imperial systems: the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and the USSR. This is a very exciting project that I am always eager to discuss further, so please feel free to reach out to me at any point. Moreover, please do not hesitate to stop by my office (1.15, Huizinga building) to say hello.