RESEARCH INTERESTS

Intellectual history, the modern Middle East, urbanism, urban history, social thought, the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, the post-Ottoman world

BIOGRAPHY

Isaac Hand is an intellectual historian of the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic. In 2022, he defended his dissertation in New York University's joint program of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. His research explores the development of social thought in the late and post-Ottoman world. His dissertation focused on the influence of urbanism on the development of urban form and municipal governance in early twentieth century Turkish cities. His article "“If the Municipality Cannot Do it!” Negotiating the Boundary between State and Society in early Republican Turkish Cities" was recently published in The Journal of Urban History. 

PUBLICATIONS

“If the Municipality Cannot do it!” Negotiating the Boundary between State and Society in Early Republican Turkish Cities,” 2022 in The Journal of Urban History.

Forthcoming in Utopianism in the Middle East and North Africa, Thomas Pierret and Simon Wolfgang Fuchs (eds.), University of Edinburgh Press: “The City is an Educator: Utopianism, Urbanism and the Creation of Republican Ankara.”

NEWS

His essay, “Melon Rinds and Mecidiyeköy Flies: Trash Collection and Urban Responsibility in Early Republican Istanbul” has received the 2023 Global Urban History Project Essay Prize for Emerging Scholars.