RESEARCH:

My work reexamines the Ottoman Empire’s entanglements with Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It shows how the empire responded to the challenges posed by Europe in innovative and unexpected ways—most importantly through recourse to international law. My research demonstrates that the late empire directly engaged with and contributed to processes that shaped the international order.

In my research, I make use of data visualization, mapping and statistical analysis to read the content of my archival database in new ways. While my research and writing are focused on legal and political history, I rely on material culture and the built environment to help guide my research questions. I use mapping and data visualization to track people, count court cases, and analyze Ottoman and British administrative practices. Digital history tools enable me to think through complex historical problems and to test out ideas before I write

PUBLICATIONS:

Empire by Law: The Ottoman Origins of the Mandates System in the Middle East (manuscript under contract, Columbia University Press)

“The Future of the Ottoman Domains: Arab Provinces and Minority Rights in the early Armistice Press,” Nationalities Papers, special issue “The Minority Question in Europe and the Middle East: From the 1919 Paris Peace Conference to Today” edited by Ariel Salzmann and Elizabeth F. Thompson (under review)

Mustafa Aksakal and Aimee M. Genell, “Salvation through War? The Ottoman Search for Sovereignty in 1914,” The Justification of War and International Order: From the Past to the Present, edited by Lothar Brock and Hendrik Simon (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2021)

Lâle Can and Aimee M. Genell, “On Empire and Exception: Genealogies of Sovereignty in the Ottoman World,” Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2020) 40 (3): 468–473

“The Well-defended Domains: Eurocentric International Law and the Making of the Ottoman Office of Legal Counsel,” edited by Lâle Can and Michael Christopher Low, The Subjects of Ottoman International Law (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020)

“The End of Egypt’s Occupation: Ottoman Sovereignty and the British Declaration of Protection,” in Beyond Versailles: Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and the Formation of New Politics after the Great War, edited by Roberta Pergher and Marcus Payk (Bloomington: University of Indiana, 2019) 

“The Well-defended Domains: Eurocentric International Law and the Making of the Ottoman Office of Legal Counsel,” Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies, 3, 2 (November 2016): pp. 255–275

“Ottoman Autonomous Provinces and the Problem of “Semi-Sovereignty” in International Law,” special issue “Autonomy and Federation in the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 18, 6(2016): 533-549

DIGITAL HISTORY PROJECTS:

(please click on the link below)

Istanbul under Allied Occupation (1918-1923)

Capitulation Courts in the Eastern Mediterranean