PhD in Art History
Merve Koksal
- Email: merve.kksal@temple.edu
Merve Koksal is a PhD student and University Fellow focusing on the intersections of modern art and culture with urban space, migration, cross-cultural exchange, and exile in late Ottoman Istanbul, particularly during the Allied occupation (1918-1923). Before joining Tyler’s Art History Department, Merve worked as a research assistant at Akdeniz University’s Painting Department (Antalya) for seven years. Since 2020, she has been involved in various interdisciplinary projects at the Orient-Institut Istanbul (Max Weber Foundation). One of these projects is the documentary film “Traugott,” which focuses on German émigré scholar and artist Traugott Fuchs. She also co-curated the exhibition titled “Negligent Internment: Memories of Çorum, 1944-46, the Çorum Paintings by Traugott Fuchs in Light of the Testimonies of Interned Germans and Austrians” with Dr. Richard Wittmann. This exhibition opened at the Orient-Institut Istanbul in May 2024.
She co-authored two articles with Professor Seza Sinanlar Uslu (Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul). Their first paper, “Mapping Istanbul’s Pera District Between Arrivals and Departures,” examines exhibition spaces and other artistic contact zones in today’s Beyoglu district from the 1840s to the 1960s. It was published in 2023 as part of the ERC project “Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile (METROMOD)” (Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich). Their second article, “Art, Solidarité et Lutte: Expositions de Peinture Pendant l’Occupation d’Istanbul,” is scheduled for publication in 2025 as part of the project “La Danse sur le Volcan” (CNR, Paris). Merve presented her findings on exhibitions and networks of local and émigré artists in occupied Istanbul at the 17th International Congress of Turkish Art (Warsaw) in 2023, and her paper was awarded a conference grant from the Istanbul Research Institute. In 2024, she conducted archival research at the Slavonic Library in Prague, where she spent three months as a guest researcher at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
MA, Art and Design, Yildiz Technical University and Akdeniz University, 2019
BA, Fashion Design, Izmir University of Economics, 2015
Advisor: Emily Neumeier, PhD