The Lausanne Project (TLP)

Extending citizenship to marginal communities is one way states grab power and influence, as well as subjects, away from rival powers. But shopping among rival "protectors" gives individuals agency, too. Çiğdem Oğuz and Jonathan Conlin discuss the "paperscapes" of nationality on the margins of the Ottoman Empire.

What happened when Islamic judges (qadis) steeped in divine law found themselves answerable to Habsburg officials who had never opened a Quran? Ninja Bumann and Julia Secklehner discuss how Habsburg-occupied Bosnia dealt with sensitive matters of marriage and divorce.

Lausanne displaced the living, and it desecrated the dead that exchanged communities left behind. Jonathan Conlin talks to Leonidas Karakatsanis and Ülker Başak Yesilkaya about grass-roots initiatives that are reversing this necroviolence.

Adnen El Ghali talks to Giorgio Ennas about his recently published book Quand la diplomatie fait la ville, which brings together the consular and architectural histories of Tunis.

Can satire build bridges between communities, as well as between past and present? Anna Kollatz talks Julia Secklehner through Erst lachen, dann denken!/Laugh first, think later!, a recent exhibition of caricatures from the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, on display in Heidelberg.

When the shooting starts, does the archaeology stop? Ceren Abi talks to Julia Secklehner about how the Ottomans and Allied powers engaged with and occasionally weaponized antiquities during the Great War.

In the last of a special series hosted by Alexandria Innes and Georgios Giannakopoulos, guests Harry Tzimitras, Ahmet Sözen, Ipek Borman and Ibrahim Ince confront Cyprus’s present impasse.

In the fourth of a special series hosted by Alexandria Innes and Georgios Giannakopoulos, guests Ibrahim Ince and Ezgican Özdemir explore how the material world records Cyprus’s division.

In the third of a special series hosted by Alexandria Innes and Georgios Giannakopoulos, guests Panikos Panayi and Giorgios Charalambous trace how Cypriots have made lives for themselves across the island's global diaspora.

In the second of a special series hosted by Alexandria Innes and Georgios Giannakopoulos, guests Giorgios Charalambous and Ibahim Ince trace how identity intersects with partition on Cyprus.

In the first of a special series hosted by Alexandria Innes and Georgios Giannakopoulos, guests Andrekos Varnava and Beyza Kiziltepe trace how Cyprus's division continues to live in the memory.

Alan Mikhail speaks to Bryony Harris about the place of plague, quarantine and environmental history in Ottoman Egypt.

William Stroebel introduces Jonathan Conlin to the stories Lausanne tried to silence, that combined scripts and vocabularies in ways that challenged philologists' obsession with linguistic purity and authorial intent.

Özge Baykan Calafato introduces Julia Secklehner and Enno Maessen to her work exploring the role of photography in developing modern Turkish citizenship.

Peter Hill talks to Charles Ough about Dr Mikha’il Mishaqa, the Mount Lebanon-born polymath and US Vice Consul in Damascus whose long life encompassed some of the most important events of the tumultuous nineteenth-century in Syria and Egypt, culminating in the 1860 massacre of the Christians of Damascus in which Mishaqa narrowly escaped with his life.

Bariş Altan introduces Julia Secklehner to Cahide Tamer, a pioneer in architectural restoration and one of the first women architects in Turkey. Recently rescued, her archive fills a gap in the story of Istanbul's historic landmarks, while her example of courage gives inspiration to today's preservationists.

Long before the Turkish State Opera opened in 1949, Halide Edip Adıvar was mong those imagining what Turkish opera might sound like. In this conversation Jonathan Conlin asks Ici Vanwesenbeeck to explain how this remarkable polymath conceived of an opera that was neither "alla franca" nor "alla turca".

Can Eyüp Çekiç and Enno Maessen revisit liberal internationalist David Davies' 1919 proposal to establish the League of Nations in Constantinople, making that city the seat of a truly international order, an order that the League failed to establish in Geneva.

Jonathan Conlin invites Samuel Foster to explain the rationale behind his new module on "Europe in the Era of the Great War" and report on how students have engaged with imagology and uncomfortable analogies with their own times.

Ozan Ozavci talks with Ismee Tames about her ongoing research into stateless people after World War I, uncovering the communities of care that stateless individuals created to rebuild their lives.

Eugene Rogan and Ozan Ozavci discuss the 1860 massacres in Damascus, the subsequent restoration of peace in Syria, and the insights this turbulent history may offer to Syrians navigating today's challenges.

Anna Enepekidou looks back at a project that turned high schoolers into curators as well as students of history.

Şahin Yeşilyurt introduces Giorgio Ennas to his research on the relationship between the late Ottoman Empire's public health and fiscal regimes.

Laura Almagor talks to Ozan Ozavci about how revisiting a supposed "Founding Father of Zionism" might open new avenues into alternative pasts and futures for Israel-Palestine.

Nile Green walks Jonathan Conlin through Ikbal and Idries Shah's unstable stable of aliases and identities.

Artemis Papatheodorou talks with Enno Maessen about the stories of Ottoman Greek refugees and their attachments to antiquities in the late Ottoman world.

Emre Erol talks to Enno Maessen about Mushir Husein Kidwai, a prominent intellectual who pleaded for Muslims of the world to unite.

Mert Cangönül discusses his ongoing research project on the Schengen visa regime with Enno Maessen.

Amir Moghadam talks to Jonathan Conlin about his ongoing research into Iranian parliamentary discourse, which is shedding new light on the transition from Qajar to Pahlavi regimes.

Sara Brinegar introduces Ozan Ozavci to her new book on the politics of oil in the post-WWI south Caucasus.

Ozan Ozavci and Demetra Tzanaki discuss eugenics, a pseudo-science that informed how the Greek state treated displaced fellow Greeks a century ago, and that lies behind our concept of meritocracy.

Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky speaks to Ozan Ozavci about his new book on North Caucasian Muslim refugees, and reveals how the Ottoman Empire developed a refugee regime half a century before the League of Nations.

Fioana Adamson and Kelly Greenhill speak about their new project on organised forced migration, past and present

Canan Balan and Jonathan Conlin discuss the emergence of early film culture in Istanbul.

Jeremy F. Walton and Julia Secklehner discuss the ERC-project Revenant: Revivals Of Empire: Nostalgia, Amnesia, Tribulation, which grapples with the complex, overlapping post-imperial memories and legacies of the Habsburg, Ottoman and Romanov Empires.

Hélène Maloigne and Julia Secklehner explore the role of archaeology in nation-building after the First World War and the discipline’s popularization in the early twentieth century.

Fokke Gerritsen, director of the Netherlands Institute in Turkey, talks to Enno Maessen about the Water Heritage for Sustainable Cities project, an initiative by the Netherlands Institute in Turkey and partners.

Pinar Odabasi Tasci and Jonathan Conlin discuss the contested borderlands of the late Ottoman Empire, from Edirne to the submerged exclave of Ada Kaleh.

Alp Yenen and Erik-Jan Zürcher talk about their new book, A Hundred Years of Republican Turkey: A History in a Hundred Fragments.

Jamie Walters and David Roessel introduce Jonathan Conlin to the American journalist Lincoln Steffens, whose Lausanne reports they dramatized, with the help of Eva Leaverton and Roniña Borja.

Sibel Karakoc and Jonathan Conlin explore how the American tobacco industry responded to the existential threat posed by Lausanne and the population exchange.

Paolo Girardelli and Enno Maessen discuss one of the most iconic diplomatic landmarks of Istanbul, the Palazzo Venezia.

Kent Schull and Jonathan Conlin talk textbooks: how can they do more to acknowledge forced migration as a recurring pattern in the history of the modern Middle East and the wider world?

Davide Rodogno and Ozan Ozavci consider how ideas of civilisation, race, and religion shaped humanitarianism in the interwar Near East.

Nermin Elsherif and Enno Maessen explore the nostalgic world of "al-zaman al-gamil": an online fantasy that Egypt's "dispossessed" middle-class calls home.

Nilay Özlü and Enno Maessen discuss the changing roles of Topkapı Palace, from Abdulaziz to the Allied Occupation.

Arie Dubnov and Jonathan Conlin discuss the founding father of "World History".

Mostafa Minawi and Ozan Ozavci discuss the stories of Sadik and Shafiq al-Mu’ayyad Azmzade, two İstanbullu imperialists from Syria, who experienced the loss of the very empire that defined them.

In the second part of their conversation, Edhem Eldem tells Enno Maessen that Ottoman historians need to get a life.

Edhem Eldem and Enno Maessen on why it isn't always easy being a historian of Ottoman and Turkish history.

Mehdi Sajid tells Ozan Ozavci the story of Shakib Arslan, a member of the Syrian-Palestinian delegation at Lausanne who sought to keep the Ottoman dream alive.

The artist Spyros Aggelopoulos talks to Julia Secklehner about the importance of the folk hero Karagiozis in his work.

Laura Robson explains to Ozan Ozavci how international refugee policies of the early 1920s put the “enterprise” in “humanitarian enterprise.”

Olga Lafazani uses the contrasts between 1922-4 and 2015 to ask hard questions about whose interests are behind the conceptualization and management of "refugee crises".

Stefan Slater and David Macfadyen talk to Julia Secklehner about the how they are reviving interest in Aloïs Derso and Emery Kelèn, whose career as caricaturists to the League and United Nations was launched by a chance meeting at Lausanne.

Ilkim Büke Okyar and Konstantinos Travlos talk to Julia Secklehner about Greek and Turkish caricatures, a neglected resource for historians of identity and conflict in the decades around the Great War.

Kristina Gedgaudaite talks to Julia Secklehner about her research on cultural memory, migration, and graphic novels in contemporary Greek culture.

Enno Maessen takes Jonathan Conlin on a tour of Beyoğlus past, present and future, from the Deutsche Schule to Emek Sineması.

Aslı Iğsız and Jonathan Conlin discuss how a concept of civilisation has been represented and exploited, from the age of Ismet and Toynbee to that of Erdoğan, Samuel Huntington and Krishan Kumar.

Isaac Hand talks to Jonathan Conlin about his current research into inter-war Turkish urbanism, particularly the contested role of the muhtar.

Mari Firkatian tells Ozan Ozavci how she discovered the lost archives of the Stancioff family, uncovering the secrets of Nadejda Stancioff, the only woman diplomat at Lausanne.

Smyrna/İzmir was in ruins in September 1922. Philip Mansel explains to Ozan Ozavci how that unique entrepot changed from a Greek-cosmopolitan to a Turkish port town, and the devastating consequences of the Great Fire.

Howard Eissenstat shares with Ozan Ozavci his concerns around the language of post-post-Kemalism, before a lively discussion on Turgut Özal, the 1990s, and whether this might be Recep Tayyib Erdoğan's last year in power.

Martin van Bruinessen explains to Ozan Ozavci how Kurdish political movements in Turkey took hold from the 1960s onward, evolving from far-leftist activism and violence to demands for inclusive democracy.

Martin van Bruinessen explains to Ozan Ozavci how travels around the Middle East in the 1970s led him to devote his career to tracing the hopes and disappointments faced by the Kurds.

Julia Secklehner talks to Jamie Walters about her plans to bring the irrepressible American reporter Clare Sheridan back to life, and back to the streets of Lausanne.

Jonathan Conlin talks agency, emplotment and subjectivity with Laura Almagor and Haakon Ikonomou, editors of a new volume addressing global biography.

In the second half of their conversation Djene Rhys Bajalan and Ozan Ozavci consider the Kurds' relationship with Russia and Britain, the Kurdish perception of Lausanne, and the 1925 Sheikh Said rebellion.

Djene Rhys Bajalan explains to Ozan Ozavci why we need to challenge traditional accounts of Kurdish political (in)activity around the Paris Peace Conference.

...what would the paintings say? Laura Popoviciu and Andrew Parratt explain to Jonathan Conlin how they curated the recent rehang of the UK Embassy in Ankara.

Elizabeth F. Thompson and Ozan Ozavci discuss Arab agency and exclusion at Lausanne, and its implications for the history of the wider Arab world, past and present.

Lerna Ekmekçioğlu and Ozan Ozavci discuss the Armenian mission to Lausanne in 1922-3, the (performative) support they received from the Allied Powers and the Turkish response to plans for an autonomous Armenian Home.

Ellinor Morack explains to Jonathan Conlin how she unpicked the tangled process of expropriation and re-allocation by which early Republican Turkey sought to create a "national economy".

Ozan Ozavci invites İlker Aytürk to develop his critical response to Erik-Jan Zürcher's arguments in last month's TLP podcast.

Jonathan Conlin talks to Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal about Britain's short-lived post-WWI empire in the eastern Mediterranean.

Erik-Jan Zürcher and Ozan Ozavci consider the two faces of Turkish historiography, as well as the tendency of Turkey's political culture to relapse into authoritarianism after each liberal democratic opening.

Erik-Jan Zürcher talks to Ozan Ozavci about the treaties of Sèvres, Lausanne and their legacy in different official histories of Turkey.

Ozan Ozavci talks to Christine Philliou about her new book "Turkey: A Past Against History" and the many lives of muhalefet (opposition) from the late Ottoman Empire to today.

Jay Winter discusses his forthcoming landmark study of Lausanne with Jonathan Conlin.

Ümit Kurt explains to Jonathan Conlin how an innocent question asked in his local cafe launched him on a journey into Gaziantep's past, uncovering the genocidal violence that gave birth to a new Muslim bourgeoisie.

Ryan Gingeras speaks to Ozan Ozavci about his 2019 book Eternal Dawn and the Kemalist mythos in Turkey.

Ozan Ozavci talks to James Ryan about early Republican political thought and loyal opposition in Turkey: liberals and leftists from Nazım Hikmet to Sabiha and Zekeriya Sertel. What made these figures the loyal opponents of the republic? And what did Lausanne mean to them?

Popular conspiracy theories surrounding the 2023 Lausanne centenary are steeped in oil. Jonathan Conlin invited Zeynep Oguz to discuss how this "absent presence" is invoked in debates surrounding irredentism and national sovereignty in Erdogan's Turkey.

Seventy years before Samuel Huntington there was Basil Mathews. Jonathan Conlin and historian Todd Thompson revisit a forgotten text that launched "the clash of civilizations".

What will 2023 mean for today's Turkey? Jonathan Conlin in conversation with historian Nick Danforth.

Ozan Ozavci asks Gingko's founder Barbara Schwepcke about the inspiration and vision behind the foundation, and how its support for TLP fits into its broader agenda.

"They All Made Peace—What Is Peace?" James Gifford talks to Jonathan Conlin about Hemingway's poetic response to the Lausanne conference, winter sports, and a lost suitcase.

In this podcast Andrew Patrick and Jonathan Conlin discuss the state of play in historical writing about oil.