Cemal Kafadar is the Vehbi Koç

Vehbi Koç

Vehbi Koç , born in Çoraklı, Ankara, Ottoman Empire, was a Turkish entrepreneur and philanthropist. He founded the Koç Group, one of Turkey’s largest and most prestigious group of companies...

 Professor of Turkish Studies at Harvard University.

Dr. Kafadar received his PhD from the McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies

McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies

The McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies and the Islamic Studies Library were established in 1952 by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and since 1983 both have been housed in Morrice Hall on McGill's campus in downtown Montreal...

 in 1987 and taught for two years in Princeton's Near Eastern studies department before coming to Harvard. Dr. Kafadar teaches seminars related to popular culture, hagiography and Ottoman historiography as well as the early modern history of the Middle East and Balkans, and is a member of the editorial board of the Historians of the Ottoman Empire

Historians of the Ottoman Empire

Historians of the Ottoman Empire is a project intending to produce a ‘Bio-bibliographical Reference Work for Ottoman literature’, covering all Ottoman works. The editorial committee consists of Hakan Karateke and Cornell Fleischer from the University of Chicago, and Cemal Kafadar form Harvard...

. He is a leading documentary critic and was a member of the jury of the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival

Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival

The Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival is a film festival, held annually since 1963 in Antalya, is the most important national film festival in Turkey...

in 2009.

Selected publications

• Kim Var İmiş Biz Burada Yoğ İken Dört Osmanlı: Yeniçeri, Tüccar, Derviş ve Hatun (2009)

• "The Question of Ottoman Decline" in Harvard Middle East and Islamic Review (1999)

• Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (1995)

• Suleiman the Second and His Time edited with Halil Inalcik (1993)

• "Self and Others: The Diary of a Dervish in Seventeenth Century Istanbul and First-Person Narratives in Ottoman Literature" in Studia Islamica (1989)