I am an anthropological historian studying how histories of mass violence shape political imaginaries of the past. My regional expertise is situated between the South Caucasus and the Middle East, in particular Armenia (Soviet and post-Soviet contexts) and Turkey. 

In 2022, I received my Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam, where I focused on the afterlives of the Armenian Genocide. My first monograph, Crafted Presence: The Armenian Genocide and Its Legacy in Armenia (under contract with Edinburgh University Press), examines how memories of the genocide and the destroyed lifeworlds of survivors who found refuge in Soviet Armenia reverberated across generations and continue to shape contemporary Armenian society through material culture, commemoration practices, and rituals. 

I am currently a postdoctoral researcher, affiliated with the ERC-funded MakeBelief project at the Meertens Institute, where my ethnographic work focuses on immersive heritage spaces associated with neo-Ottomanism in Turkey (war panoramas, miniature parks, and digital experience museums) and their role in shaping contemporary political imaginaries. 

My work has been recognized by international fellowships and grants. In 2023-24, I was a Meertens-NIAS Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. In 2018-19, I was granted the Robert J. Katz Doctoral Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies at the University of Southern California. I also received the Beyond Borders Travel Grant from the Hrant Dink Foundation in 2016 and the Genocide and Human Rights University Program Scholarship from the Zoryan Institute in 2013.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Ayşenur Korkmaz©