Before coming to Harvard University Daria Kovaleva previously acquired a Master's Degree in Oriental and African Studies from Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2011 (Moscow, Russia) and a MA degree in Comparative History with the specialization in the Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies from the Central European University in 2014 (Budapest, Hungary). Her academic interests include Ottoman elites, Imperial household, and urban culture of the Ottoman world, non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire, travel literature, cross-confessional diplomacy in Constantinople, the Ottoman state as an early modern Mediterranean empire, "early modernity" as a conceptual paradigm, as well as the genesis of European Orientalism.