Zihni Özdil

Biographical Note

I am a junior lecturer and PhD candidate at Erasmus University's School of History, Culture and Communication. Currently I am  teaching courses on the history of the Middle East as well as Dutch and American migration history. My PhD research focuses on state-building and non-sunni Muslim religious minorities in early Republican Turkey. As president of Confetti, the editorial board of De Unie, I am organizing debates and other activities on societal issues faced by urban youth in the city of Rotterdam.

I have acquired my BA and MA at Erasmus University. In the course of my MA research on the history of Arab American migration and assimilation I have spent a semester at Central Michigan University, United States. Between 2008 and 2010 I have worked as a Programme Manager for the Turkije Instituut in The Hague. In 2009 I was a final candidate for the Mozaiek fund of NWO (The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) on the assimilation/integration process of Arab-Americans and the Turkish-Dutch from a comparative perspective.

My (research) interests are broad yet interlinked. In essence, my field of interest is the interplay between ‘power’ and the ‘other’, which reflects itself in the themes I am studying:

•    The interplay between statebuilding/modernization and minorities
•    Migration and citizenship in Europe and the United States with a special focus on Turkish-Dutch and Arab-Americans
•    The modern history of international relations from  the point of view of ‘the South’ or the Third World
•    Protest movements (labor, gender, minorities) in the  post-Cold War era
•    Political economy of the neoliberal age

Currently I am teaching the following courses:

For more information about my activities and publications please visit my personal website.