Aytac Yurukcu

Doctoral Researcher, working on recent research project:

“Imperial War, Collective Memories and National Identities in the Borderlands of Europe: Identity Formation among Peripheral Minorities during and after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78”.

KM-19-11076 Finnish Government Scholarship Pool, EDUFI, “First Encounter of Two Nations in Balkans in the History of Relations between Finland and Turkey; Finnish Soldiers and War Reports During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78”.

TM-21-11709 / Finnish Government Scholarship Pool, EDUFI, “War Propaganda and the Role of Media in Comparative Perspective: Analysing the Media Sources of the Russo-Turkish War 1877-78”.

My research interests include journalism, media, press, war correspondence, diaries and reminiscences late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Also my research area specialises in identity and nationalism, historical image studies, intellectual history, cultural history, mapping and cartography. Currently, I am a reviewer for International Journal of Cartography ICACI/IJC and I am in the Editorial Board of The World History Bulletin (2020/2022), an official publication of the World History Association.

I wish to thank the following teachers and professors, who often went against the grain and got into trouble for that and dedicated a lot of their time to my learning and academic development, far beyond what their formal duties required. In order of their appearance in my life: Mustafa Gezer (Secondary School “Aliço School Koyunyeri”, Edirne), Docent Bülent Atalay (Trakya University, Department of History, Edirne), Prof. Hüseyin Mevsim (Ankara University, Faculty of Language, History and Georgraphy, Ankara), Prof. Jeremy Smith (University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu), Docent Teuvo Laitila (University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu).