u.u.ungor@uu.nl
Department of History and Art History – Political History
Research Institute for History and Art History (OGK) – International and Political History
The Genocide Education Project hosted a presentation by Prof. Ugur Ungor. Ungor’s lecture was based on his two recent books,The Making of Modern Turkey, which addresses how Western Armenia became part of the Turkish state, and Confiscation and Destruction, about Turkey’s seizure of Armenian Property.
Prof. Ungor is assistant professor of history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He is also a researcher at the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and is a regular contributor to the Armenian Weekly newspaper. Ungor received his PhD in Holocaust and Genocide Studies in 2009 from the University of Amsterdam. He is of Turkish descent, born in Turkey and raised in Europe.
From 1913 to 1950, successive Turkish governments subjected the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire to a violent policy of ethnic homogenization. Based on a decade of research on a range of unexamined records,Üngör will demonstrate that the Armenian genocide was part and parcel of this wider process. He will offer insights into the economic ramifications of the genocide and describe how the plunder was organized on the ground. He will conclude that this violent process destroyed historical regions and emptied multicultural cities, but also cleared the way for the modern Turkish nation state.
Prof.Üngör is Assistant Professor of History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and a regular contributor to the Armenian Weekly newspaper. He studied sociology and history in North America and Europe, and received a Master’s Degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from the University of Amsterdam. His PhD thesis, published by Oxford University Press is titled, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950.
Profile
Ugur Ümit Üngör (1980) gained his Ph.D. in 2009 (cum laude) at the University of Amsterdam. In 2008-09, he was Lecturer in International History at the Department of History of the University of Sheffield, and in 2009-10, he was Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for War Studies of University College Dublin. Currently he is Lecturer at the Department of History at Utrecht University and at the Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam.
His main areas of interest are state formation and nation formation, with a particular focus on mass violence. These interests necessitate a commitment to inter-disciplinarity at the intersections of social science and history. His most recent publications include Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (Continuum, 2011) and the award-winning The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Apart from his academic life, Ugur writes satirical columns and essays about cosmopolitan life on and across political and cultural boundaries. His essays offer an attempt at placing current global issues and themes in serious and ironic perspectives.
mass violence – ethnic conflict – genocide