About

What is Polonia Ottomanica all about?

Our blog is dedicated to the study of historical intersections between residents of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, its former territories during the 19th century, and the Ottoman Empire. Renegades, refugees, exiles, émigrés, ambassadors, spies, slaves, pilgrims, merchants and mercenaries passed between these two zones alone and in groups from the 15th century into the present era. Our goal is to help support scholarship related to these individuals and their communities and help to connect scholars around the globe through collaborative research.

Our Team

Blog Administrators

Michael Połczyński  is a graduate of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, holds an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago, and is currently a Doctoral Candidate at Georgetown University. Michael's dissertation research focuses on the Polish-Lithuanian / Ottoman frontier during the 16th and 17th centuries. His love of primary sources material, political theory and social history find expression through methodological interests including historical Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and agent-based modeling. His favorite color is green, and his favorite animal is a giant squid and a sperm whale locked in eternal combat. For more see: academia.edu

Paulina Dominik received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Oxford, where she read Turkish and Persian. In 2013 she was awarded an MSt in Oriental Studies from the same institution. Her Master programme was dedicated both to the Ottoman/Turkish and Polish history and literature. Currently she is based in Istanbul where she is carrying out research on the Polish political émigrés in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire. Paulina Dominik is part of the Orient-Institut Istanbul’s international and interdisciplinary project “Istanbul Memories”. Within the scope of the project she works on the personal narratives of the Late Ottoman Istanbul written in Polish. Her academic interests cover Late Ottoman history, Polish history in the post-partition period, Eastern European Orientalism, Ottoman Occidentalism and Orientalism in literature and press. For more see: academia.edu

Contributors

Dr. Hacer Topaktaş received her BA and MA from Karadeniz Technical University in Trabzon. She received her PhD at Hacettepe University in Ankara.  Now she works as an assistant professor at Istanbul University. She has undertaken several periods of study at the University of Warsaw, the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, the University College of London  and Bonn University in Germany. Her academic works are related to Ottoman/Turkish-Polish relations, Ottoman diplomacy,  and Eastern Europe in the past and present. See academia.edu