Alper Metin - Cotsen Travel Fellow at the Gennadius Library

Alper Metin (Ph.D. Arch.) is an architect and architectural historian. He currently holds a postdoctoral research position at the University of Bologna - Alma Mater Studiorum (Department of the Arts) and teaches architectural history at Sapienza University of Rome. His research primarily focuses on Ottoman architectural and urban history during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with an emphasis on cross-cultural interactions between the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe, as well as intercommunal and interreligious exchanges in Istanbul and the Aegean provinces. His research project at the Gennadius Library, titled "Greek actors of the so-called Ottoman Baroque: patrons, architects, builders, and users," seeks to explore the role of Aegean networks in the architectural and urban renewal of Istanbul, with particular attention to Greek Orthodox building activity between the 1740s and 1770s.