Dr Songül Mecit
Teaching Fellow Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
Contact details
- Email: S.Mecit@ed.ac.uk
Background
Dr Songül Mecit joined IMES as a Teaching Fellow for Islamic History and Middle Eastern Studies in April 2020. She previously held the posts Postdoctoral Fellow and Teaching Fellow at IMES from 2010 to 2015, when she took a career break to care for her family. Songül studied medieval and modern western history as well as political science at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf in Germany. She completed her studies in Düsseldorf with a MPhil in Medieval Turkish history. Songül then focussed her academic interests on Medieval Turkish and Islamic history and obtained a DPhil in Islamic History from the University of Edinburgh in 2010. She is currently undertaking research on the modern history of Islam and Muslims in Europe, especially the Turkish and Kurdish Alevi diasporas in Germany and Great Britain.
Qualifications
- DPhil in Islamic History, University of Edinburgh
- MPhil in Medieval Turkish History, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany
- UG studies History and Political Science, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany
Research summary
Dr Songül Mecit’s research interests are in the history of ideas, ideology, mentality of medieval Muslim dynasties as well as the modern nation states, nationalism, transnational studies and minorities in Islam. She particularly aims to bridge disciplinary boundaries between medieval and modern history as well as social sciences.
Current research interests
• Muslim minorities in Europe • Diasporas and transnational studies in Islam • Minorities and Identities in Islamic history, the place of Muslim minorities within Islam • Muslim and Christian relations in past and present • Relations between nomads and sedentary people • Frontier and periphery in medieval and modern Islamic history • History of ideas, ideology, mentality and the formation of medieval dynastiesBook:
- The Rum Seljuqs: Evolution of a Dynasty, Routledge Studies in the History of Iran and Turkey, London/ New York: Routledge 2014, Turkish translation by Iletişim Yayınları, Istanbul, 2018.
Edited Volume:
- with Christian Lange. The Seljuqs: Politics, Society and Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2011.
Book chapter:
- ‘Kingship and Ideology under the Rum Seljuqs’, in Christian Lange and Songül Mecit (eds.), The Seljuqs: Politics, Society and Culture, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2011, 63-78.