Can Gümüş-İspir

Can Gümüş-İspir is a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at Harvard University and teaches modern Turkish history at Boğaziçi University’s Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History. Her research focuses on the environmental and urban history of the late Ottoman Empire, with particular interests in public health, infrastructure, and the history of medicine. At Harvard, she is working on Negotiated Infrastructures: Ecology, Disease, and the Politics of Hygiene in Late Ottoman Istanbul, a book project that examines how sanitation, disease, and urban ecology shaped governance, everyday life, and human–environment relations in the late Ottoman capital. She was co-winner of the Middle East Studies Association’s 2025 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in the Humanities. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Ottoman History Podcast and a translator of books on Ottoman and Middle Eastern history.