Keynote & Book Presentation

Dr. Soumaya Louhichi is an Ottoman historian and scholar of Turkish and Middle Eastern studies. She coordinates and leads the Ottoman History section of the Encyclopaedia Arabica at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and serves as Coordinator of Turkish Studies at the University of Tunis. She also teaches at the Institute for Islamic Studies at Heidelberg University. 
Her research spans Ottoman and post-Ottoman history, with particular interests in state formation and border-making, political belonging, Arab–Turkish relations and entanglements, and modern Middle Eastern historiography. She is the (co-)editor of Post-Ottoman Transitions: Rethinking Nation-State Trajectories in the Arab and Turkish Contexts (Ergon, 2026). Her work combines perspectives on the Ottoman imperial context with questions concerning its transformations and legacies in the modern Middle East and Turkey. She has conducted archival research in Turkey, Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, France, and the United Kingdom and has taught Ottoman, Islamic, and Middle Eastern history at several German universities.