SHIFA-ANA Workshop II
We’re excited to share the program for our upcoming workshop:
Histories of Death and Disease in the Mediterranean World
🗓️ June 15–16, 2026
📍 ANAMED, Istanbul
Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and career stages, the workshop features panels, roundtables, and poster presentations exploring death, disease, and healing across the Mediterranean.
We look forward to welcoming you in Istanbul!
Day 1 – Monday, June 15
8:30 – 9:15 | Registration & Coffee
9:15 – 9:30 | Welcome Remarks
09:30 – 11:00 | Session 1
Governing Disease in the Mediterranean World during the Long Nineteenth Century
Atıl Öder, “Negotiating Rabies: The Ottoman Public, Press, Doctors, and State in the Early Vaccination Era, 1885-1890”
Benan Grams, “Contagion at the Advent of Cholera: Politics and Meaning of Disease and Its Transmission in Nineteenth-Century Damascus”
Gökçe Güler, “The Impact of İane and Social Aid Campaigns on Epidemic Management in the Late Ottoman Empire”
Mohammad Hossain,“‘A Mercy and Martyrdom for Believers’: Moralı Osman Efendi’s Plague Treatise and Health Reform Consciousness in the Early Nineteenth-Century Ottoman State”
11:00 – 11:20 | Coffee Break
11:20 – 12:50 | Session 2
Approaching Death and Disease through Literary Worlds
Bilge Tatar, “Healing, Magic, and the Kitchen against Modern Medicine: Biopolitics and Gender in Sevim Burak, Leyla Erbil, and Sema Kaygusuz”
Ahmet Ergün, “Rabies as a Moral Disease: The Bestiality of the Human in Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar’s Evlere Şenlik, Kaynanam Nasıl Kudurdu? [What a Disaster, How My Mother-In-Law Went Mad] (1927)”
Zeynep Avcı Uğur, “Between Life and Death: Knowledge and Liminality in the Early Modern Ottoman Narratives”
Şeyhmus Öyün, “The Visible and the Invisible in Ottoman Rûznâmes: Plague, Daily Life, and the Culture of Record-Keeping in the Eighteenth Century”
12:50 – 14:30 | Lunch Break
14:30 – 16:00 | Session 3
Paleopathological and Genetic Approaches
Ahmet Özbek, “The Diagnostic Power of Paleopathology: The Contribution of Molecular Paleomicrobiology”
Mehmet Görgülü, “Dental Paleopathology and the Agricultural Transition in Anatolia”
Fatih Tepgeç, “Challenges in Paleopathological Interpretation of Archaeological Human Remains: Context, Methods, and Common Pitfalls”
Ravneet Sidhu, “Employing Interdisciplinary Approaches to Study Life and Disease amidst the Expansion of Medieval and Early Modern Plague Networks in the Ottoman Empire”
16:00 – 16:20 | Coffee Break
16:20 – 18:05 | Session 4
Necropolitical Power over Bodies
Cemre Ünaldı, “Monsters on Gallows: Death Penalty as Sovereign Spectacle in Turkey”
Esra Abaoğlu, “Negotiating the Semantic Void: A Panorama of Suicide in the Late Ottoman Empire”
Zeynep Naz Simer, “A Re-interpretation of Ottoman Imperial Protocol through the Lens of Diseases”
Efe Erünal, “Counting Death in the Ottoman Empire: Sources, Methods, and Mortality Regimes”
Gülbeyaz Küre, “Infant Mortality from Diarrheal Diseases in Ottoman Istanbul (1898-1903): Evidence from Mortality Registers”
Day 2 – Tuesday June 16
9:00 – 9:30 | Coffee
09:30 – 10:45 | Session 5
Rethinking Disease through New Methodological Approaches and Digital Humanities
Ayşe Gülsezer, “Medical Imaging as Visual Archive: Rethinking Sources for the History of Psychiatric and Neurological Disorders in the Age of Digital Humanities”
Merve Yıldırım Özbaş, “Rethinking Darüşşifas in Anatolia: Connectivity and Knowledge-Producing Networks”
Enes Yılandiloğlu, “Narrating Disease and Healing in the Eastern Mediterranean through Eighteenth-Century British Travelogues”
10:45 – 11:05 | Coffee Break
11:05 – 12:35 | Session 6
Rethinking Necrogeographies
Selvihan Kurt, “Governing the Dead: Cemeteries, Disease, and Urban Modernity in Late Ottoman İzmir”
Marina Inì, “Death and Religious Diversity in Early Modern Italy: Tolerance, Intolerance, and Coexistence”
Damla Özakay, “Between Kurgans and Crypts: Embalming and Local Acculturation in Late Medieval Amasya”
İsmail Yaşayanlar, “Governing Death in an Age of Mass Migration: Refugee Burial Practices and the Spatial Politics of Cemeteries in Istanbul”
12:35 – 14:00 | Lunch Break
14:00 – 15:30 | Session 7
Bodies in Dis-ease: Heat, Pain, and Anger
Şeyma Kabaoğlu, “Markets of Relief: An Ethnographic Approach to Fibromyalgia in Istanbul”
Fatma Zişan Tokaç, “Hot as an Oven: Narrations of Heat-Related Disease, Disaster, and Death in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Istanbul”
Şeyma Afacan, “Asabiyet Politicized: A Case in Gender, Medicine and Emotions in the Late Ottoman Empire”
Anas Taleb, “Forever Young: A Middle Eastern History of Rejuvenation”
15:30 – 15:50 | Coffee Break
15:50 – 17:00 | Session 8
Knowing the Bodies: Dead or Alive
Zeynep Ergün, “Quarantine at the Frontier: Ottoman Disease Governance on the Iranian Border in the 1860s”
Yılmaz Efe Çetinyürek, “Constructing Legal Death: Visibility and Early Forensic Inspection in Early Modern İstanbul”
Muhammad Sinan, “Sneezing, Knowledge, and Etiquette: Hayreddin Hızır Atufi’s Kitāb al-ʿuṭās”
Enes Sayın & Cenker Sarıkaya, “Beyond ‘Medical Missions’: Dorothy Blatter’s Cap and Candle and Nursing in American Medical Institutions in 1960s’ Turkey”
17:00 – 17:15 | Coffee Break
17:15 – 18:05 | Concluding Remarks