Irmak Şensöz is a PhD student in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. She works on the social and political history of the Ottoman Empire between the 18th and 20th centuries, focusing on questions of mobility, migration, and borders. Her research aims to understand how the constant movement and (re)settlement of ordinary people shaped the modern Middle East. She is also interested in the region’s environmental history, Ottoman-Iranian interactions, and late modern legal reform projects.  

Irmak earned a BSFS in International History, with minors in Persian and Turkish, from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Her undergraduate thesis focused on the forced sedentarization (iskân) of nomadic pastoralists in Anatolia during the Tanzimat period. It was awarded the Jules Davids Medal by the Department of History.