Özlem Yıldız is a PhD candidate in Art History at Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University. During the 2025-2026 academic year, she is a residential fellow at ANAMED (Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations) in Istanbul. She is working on completing her dissertation project, titled “Illustrating the Lives of the Prophets in Sixteenth-Century Islamic Manuscripts.” This dissertation comparatively analyzes the visual language and symbolism of the tales of the prophets in Ottoman and Safavid illustrated manuscripts. In 2024, Yıldız completed a 12-month fellowship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she conducted research for this ongoing project and contributed to public programming. Previously, she taught undergraduate art history courses at Temple University and served as a guest curator at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Her recent publications include “An Encounter with the Ottoman Book” and “A Wise Enemy: The Seventeenth Century Ottoman Portrayal of the Polish Commander Stanisław Żółkiewski.” Yıldız holds an MA in History of Art and Architecture of the Islamic Middle East from SOAS University of London and an MA in History from Sabancı University.